Bringing the plants inside
 

During the last few weeks, I have been bringing in my tropical plants. I still have a pair of olives and a dwarf 'Big Red' pomegranate tree to bring indoors as well as some bulbs that will go dormant and a cactus but, for the most part, the plants are inside. For each plant, I have been soaping the plants up with Dawn dishsoap, leaving the soap on the leaves for a bit, washing the leaves off, soaking the pot in water with soap, then flushing the pots with water, letting it all dry and spraying the leaves and top of the soil with Neem oil. Some of the plants have been getting a severe pruning so that they will fit under the lights. :|

I have about fifty orchids and over forty other types of plants. :)

Looks like a jungle. I'm surprised Dawn isn't bad for the foliage. I have some plants that I'd love to scrub down.

Leafmite you've been busy!!! What a job that must be and time consuming. I hope your treatment rids your plants of any nasties, can't imagine having that many plants and later finding insects.

I have a handful of plants outside, not orchids, that I need to bring inside soon. This weekend will be a good time to treat them and haul them in. I really love fall but I am dreading winter this year, must be getting old:/

Good luck with your other plants still to move in!

Yikes! Leafmite you are one busy grower! Can we see a picture of the room? Here's mine: except now it has a fireplace on the right and is stuffed with orchids.

There are a few plants (i.e. butterworts) that did not get the soap treatment but the ones who have gotten it have suffered no ill effect except maybe getting some leaves knocked off or dropping a couple of leaves (one of the citrus). I felt that scrubbing the plants down was better than the mealy/scale infestation that I had last year. I will probably still get something but I am ready with a few remedies that should be safe for indoor use and on 'edible' plants.

Moving the collection indoors or outdoors is never a chore that I happily anticipate but it is much easier now that all my pots are of a manageable size. :)

Good luck getting your own plants indoors!

---------- Post added at 10:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:14 PM ----------

What a nice place to relax!
I am just keeping the plants in the bedroom, if you are curious. In the past, before the lights, they were all over the home. At that time, too, I had a huge passiflora vine that would grow about forty feet of vine during the months that it was in the house for the winter (I always cut it before bringing it inside) as well as a huge Bird of Paradise and a few other very large plants. Now I have the mess tamed to a smaller area. Of course, during the winter, herbs often still appear in the kitchen window....

I moved all of mine in during that cold snap in early Sept and then, as usual, we had that really hot warm up the past 2 weeks so the lights had to be shut down early just about every day. I agree the move in and move out is never a pleasant task but I always love getting them back inside. I am not lovin' the extra work it takes to water and fert but I love how the house smells when they are inside. I have a number of very fragrant plants blooming right now...both day and night...and it smells amazing in my house. Well, unless we go upstairs to the cacti/succulent room (also reg tropicals)...where my stapelia gigantea is in bloom. Stinks up there! In the middle of the day I can smell it before I get to the door. Ewwwww! Thankfully none of the flowers last more than a few days...but with 3-5 open at a time...it gets quite stinky up there. Must be a happy plant though because it's been blooming for months now. Gotta take the good w/the bad, right? :biggrin:

That cold snap was when I began to bring them inside. I thought winter was actually coming early. I brought in all the delicate plants and, yes, it became very hot during the day, especially the day it was 90'F. Like you, I turned my lights off early. I have quite a few fragrant plants so I usually have something perfuming the home. One of my favorites is the jasmine as it blooms quite often.

The Stapelia gigantea has such wonderful flowers that it is a plant well worth having! My family would probably be very unhappy if I bought one of them but I have always been tempted. :)

This is the first year with the larger pomegranate tree ('Big Red') and olive trees so I am still not sure of the chill period. My smaller pom tree ('Nana') produces flowers and fruit and the figs all fruited with no chill period at all but I have never grown a different pom variety or olives. Does anyone else grow these in Northern climates?

I left everything out in the last cold snap except my bulbo and brassavola nodosa, both on mounts, which I brought in again yesterday. After being vindicated by the heatwave that followed, I feel reluctant to bring anything in today. The low for the next 2-3 nights is forecast as 50 degrees, which is the exact cut off for many plants, so I may be pushing it for the catasetums and my cacti. However I want to take advantage of all the sunshine and above 70 degree day temps that are still forecast for the rest of the week! This is my first summer leaving a lot of these plants outside so I'm torn. I might bring some in for the night and put them back out in the morning. I'm sure my cymbs and den. kingianums are having a great time though.

When you say olives do you mean olive trees?

You can always cover the plants with clear plastic drop clothes at night if it gets cold. I have done that in the past.

---------- Post added at 05:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:25 PM ----------

I have a Olea europaea ‘Arbequina’ and ‘Koroneiki.' I have seen them created into very attractive bonsai. I am not sure they are large enough to produce flowers but thought it might be worth a try.

I also have a Sweet Olive (Osmanthus fragrans).