Sustainable Sprayer

This is the Professional Plant & Garden Sprayer (32 oz) from the The Bottle Crew by way of Wal-Mart.

Professional Plant & Garden 32 oz. Sprayer
Item #PPG-32
32 oz. Capacity
Professional fully adjustable high output trigger sprayer
More chemically resistant
Includes a mixing scale for easy mixing
Ideal for the professional Gardner
Made in USA

I've used many spray bottles over the years. I've also had many spray bottles that stopped spraying. Most annoying!

This one is the best I've ever used. It's now the go-to spray bottle for neem oil spray. Any sign of a plant pest and zap! In addition, the look of the foliage after spraying is great.

Many of the plants in the Greenscaper Consumer Lab are growing in expanded clay pebbles with decorative pebble groundcover. Incidentally, there is no need for finger poking using the pipette water level guage. I spray the pebbles with neem oil and it really freshens them up. They look clean and natural after spraying, as do the leaves on the plant.

And no, I don't waste time spritzing the plants every day in a futile effort to elevate the humidity. As we say in my home town...fuggedaboutit!

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Cool Cans

These cool looking watering cans with a swivel spout come in 3 sizes…Mini (1.06 qt/1L), Indoor (3.17 qt/3L) and Outdoor (2.11 gal/8L).

I'm going to buy an Indoor model and check it out. Watering cans are much like kitchen knives. You need to experience how they feel in your hand.

Update: May 26, 2007 - Watering can received and used. Looks cool, feels cool, pours cool. Good product!

Source: OXO watering cans

NOTE
Sorry that comments don’t work. There's a software bug that I don't know how to fix. Please email your comments, questions and suggestions until I can get comments working again. Thanks!
e-mail Bob Hyland
bobhyland[AT]insideplantslive [dot]org

Are you bug-eyed? These glasses mite help

Click to enlarge.

If you have mites, there is no might about them. They are definitely indoor plant enemies and difficult to detect. These glasses will help you find tiny mites that can wreck havoc with your indoor plants. They will also help you find scale and mealybugs and any other critters that can damage your well cared for plant friends.

Pest “scouting” as it is called by greenhouse growers is one of the most important things you can do for your plants. Early detection is one of the best prevention and control methods.

I should know better after all these years but I paid the price of losing my loupe last year (probably not all I lost). A large number of tabletop Ficus plants in the lab were infested with mites because of my failure in doing a good scouting job. I finally treated them and the plants are only now coming back with a flush of new leaves. You can see a couple of mite damaged leaves in the foreground.

These loupes came from eBay seller Barton Jones in Utah. The small 10x 18mm jeweler’s loupe has an LED light. Barton also recommended the larger 10x 48mm loupe for older eyes. It was a good idea. Incidently, it was handy recently in locating some tiny cactus needles in my finger. They’re hard to find without a magnifier.

Read Barton’s consumer guide "Jeweler Loupe, tips on choosing the one you need". It’s most informative and created a good first impression of him which was confirmed by the transaction. If you don't have a loupe I would recommend you buy one from him.

SuperStake

If you need to stake an indoor plant, it’s usually a sign of insufficient light and humidity. With that said this looks like an interesting product for those who need to stake a spindly plant. Read more about Superstake...

Seeing Clearly

Click to enlarge. This is the back-story about the plants in the Greenscaper Lab. Behind the scenes, most of them live in some kind of clear plastic container. In my experience, the best planters for subirrigation (and hydroculture) of indoor plants are food service plastics. Just add an AquaPad (polyester batting, aka backing material) underneath to trigger capillary action.

You’ll find containers like these in your kitchen, or perhaps from the snacks or kitchen departments of stores like Costco, Trader Joe’s, Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, The Container Store, and many other retail stores. Curiously, the last place I find good planters, either utility or decorative, is in a nursery or houseplant department.

I remove the plant from its opaque grow pot and repot into clear plastic so that I can easily inspect the most important part of the plant, the soil and root system. Opaque plastic grow pots prevent this. Does it make any sense that the most important area of the plant is hidden from your view?

It doesn’t make any sense for other than the greenhouse growers. They use opaque pots to prevent algae from growing in the greenhouse under relatively high light (2-3000 foot-candles) and high humidity. Typical interior light in a building, however, is more in the range of 25 to 200 foot-candles coupled with low humidity.

Algae is not a problem with clear containers if you install them inside a decorative cachepot. It makes plant care much easier and it looks immeasurably better than a plastic grow pot sitting in a saucer. I see photos of these rather homely plants all the time on my travels around the web.

New and recycled food containers work really well. Save and recycle all kinds of clear plastic food containers. All you have to do is drill some small holes at the bottom for capillary action to take place.

You will soon find which ones work best for you. Recycled clear plastics are good for the caretaker, good for the plants and, when recycled, good for the environment. They’re a winner all around!

There are a number of examples in the photo above. Future posts will show photos of the finished products.

1. Microwave food covers – These cost about $2 at Wal-Mart and Target. They make excellent containers for tabletop plants in shallow bowls. Use them in melamine bowls ($6-9) from stores such as Target, The Party Store and Bed, Bath & Beyond.
2. Party cups – 9oz squat, 9oz tall, 16oz, etc. These work well inside tumblers, tall narrow vases, etc. These are available everywhere at retail. Recycle them from your party.
3. Basket liners – These are available in the houseplant or garden department of nurseries and big box stores in 6”, 8”, and 10” diameters. Use them inside various food service and decorative bowls.
4. Food storage containers (Rubbermaid, Glad, etc.) – These are widely available at retail. Cut the upper rim off as you see in the photo.
5. Clear plastic cookie containers – Laguna Bakery Oat Bran with Raisins 98% fat free cookies from Costco are a favorite snack. They’re even more favored because of their 10” diameter x 3 ½” tall clear plastic food container packaging. There are many dozens of them now housing indoor plants in the lab. Trader Joe’s also has many sizes of clear food containers housing cookies and other products.

Most of these containers are made of PET (Poly Ethylene Terephthalate) plastic and although thin walled are as tough as nails. Having accidentally dropped one of these planters from a height of 5 feet with no damage to the plant or container I can attest to their toughness.

6. Plastic Colanders – Although not clear these make excellent planters in certain size bowls. Eight and 1/2" colanders are available at Target for about $2.

Plug-in Fungus Gnat Catcher

Got gnats? You don’t need a FlyWeb if you’re watering your houseplants in an environmentally sound way. Moist soil in your living environment is a common problem created only by top watered houseplants.

The surface is always dry with measured sub-irrigation or hydroculture. Therefore, there is no environment available for fungus gnat propagation.

Water by sub-irrigation or hydroculture and you don’t need a gnatcatcher, vinegar in a dish, yellow sticky traps, diatomaceous earth, or any of the other hokey home brew remedies that circulate in houseplant forums. It’s that simple.

Simple it may be but outdoor garden writers just don't get it. The primary reason for that is the failure of the USDA extension programs to teach other than the outdated drench and drain watering method. They simply don't know what they don't know which is ignorance supported by taxpayer dollars.

Classy Watering

I've seen this watering can in IKEA from time to time. I'll have to try one the next time I see them. It looks good and the price is right. This watering can is also from IKEA. It has good ergonomics and you can see the water level through the translucent plastic.

Fertilzer

Click to enlarge. I use a constant feed method in the Greenscaper Consumer Lab using Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro 9-3-6 and Bloom 3-12-6. All of the plants receive more than adequate light and are watered properly using sub-irrigation. The plastic food dispensers and measuring spoons make precise measurement easy to do.

Do I recommend that you fertilize your houseplants? My advice is when in doubt, do not.

The most important plant “food” you can give your indoor plants is adequate light. Water, of course, is essential for survival. Contrary to the advice of fertilizer companies and many outdoor gardeners, fertilizer is a far distant third in order of priority.

I've experienced over the past thirty plus years that the majority of houseplants that die or are in poor health have suffered from insufficient light, too much water and probably too much fertilizer.

In my interior plantscaping business, we did not fertilize at all. It is difficult to manage with a large number of field personnel. Our plants did not suffer from lack of fertilizer. We had an excellent reputation for providing high quality interior plant care service.

Cutting, Pruning Tools

Click to enlarge. Two of our cutting/pruning tools do 99% of the work. The third is for those who maintain Rhapis palms. All of them are widely available online.

The heaviest use is for the lightweight florist shears at the top. We think of them as both scissors and pruners. We use them for a wide variety of cutting/pruning jobs from trimming leaves to cutting thin plastics. In our opinion there is little or no need for typical outdoor gardening pruners.

This is particularly true if you have a pair of 8" concave cutters, considered the most important beginning bonsai tool. We use them constantly to prune Ficus and Schefflera arboricola branches. It's the best way to cut branches close to the trunk without leaving a stub.

When you cut with concave cutters the bark eventually heals over leaving little or no trace of the pruning scar. We even do a much better job of trimming Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum) leaves off at the base leaving a minimal stub.

If you maintain Rhapis palms, a pair of pinking shears does a great job of trimming frond tips. The pinking shears leave an edge that mimics the corrugated end of Rhapis frond tips.

What's Wrong With This Picture?

We frequently see pictures like this on the web and in books to illustrate houseplant or indoor plant care. Pretty picture but it sends the wrong message. Houseplant care isn’t backyard gardening but that’s what these tools are for.

We’ve updated our photoblog with some more plant care tools we use. You won’t see any clay pots, trowels or cultivators.

Got Pretzels?

Click to enlarge. We should have posted this before you bought your New Year celebration snacks. We discovered that a recycled UTZ pretzel container makes a very good propagating chamber. Can we get LEED credit for this?

We bought our UTZ pretzels at Costco but you can also find them online here. There are 2 sizes, 40 and 55 oz. It appears the 55-ounce container we buy at Costco is not available online. The dimensions are approximately; 40 oz – 11 ½” h x 6 ½” diameter. 55 oz – 12 ½” h x 8” diameter.

We use a mix of two parts vermiculite to one part SuperSoil. The mix is moist but does not stick together when squeezed. We also spray some water inside the container, which we keep closed. The propagating containers receive mostly fluorescent light in the range of 300 to 400 foot-candles for a 16-hour day. We have rooted Ficus, Schefflera and Dracaena sanderiana (Lucky Bamboo) cuttings in a few weeks. Aglaonema cuttings have taken much longer.

It works well and sure looks better than tacky looking glasses of water on our kitchen windowsill. Our success rate has been close to 100%.

Watering Can

Click to enlarge. This watering can holds about one half gallon of water (one milk container). We have found the ergonomics to be very good. It pours easily and four pounds (when full) doesn't put undue strain on your shoulder. It is translucent. We bought it at IKEA, but have never seen it there again and wonder why. It is a very good product at low cost (about two dollars as we recall).

Water Storage Rack

Click to enlarge. An inexpensive Cube shelf imported by Seville Classics works well as a water storage rack holding sixteen gallons of water in a small amount of space. We buy a package of eight Cubes at Costco for about eighteen dollars.

Water Carrier

Click to enlarge. We also use the Ultra Caddy trays as four-gallon water carriers. We used a Sharpie pen to mark the eight-ounce graduation lines.

Indoor Plant Care Kit

Click to enlarge. This utility tray holds eight half-gallon recycled milk containers. They fit as if the tray was custom molded. In this configuration, four of the milk containers hold water and we trimmed four to serve as tool holders. Note the foot-candle light meter and soil probe.

Unfortunately, the manufacturer changed the design. It looks like the new 1584 tray will probably hold six, rather than eight milk containers. You may be able to find some of the old trays somewhere. It is called an Ultra Caddy (item no. 1582), made by Sterilite Corp, Townsend, MA. We also use the Ultra Caddy trays in our plant lab for water storage and delivery.

This is a typical “indoor gardening” tool carrier available on the web. It holds a general-purpose trowel, bulb trowel, hand cultivator, bypass pruner and thinning shears. This was obviously configured by an outdoor gardener who knows little about indoor plant care. What, pray tell, is the need for a cultivator, trowel and bulb trowel?

There is also a little mister for nervous Nellies who waste time misting their house plants. The only worthwhile item is the pair of thinning shears. We have two pairs and use them for a wide variety of cutting and trimming jobs from leaves to plastics.

Probe With A Probe

I've previously recommended using a soil probe to check soil moisture. Using your finger as a probe may be handy, pun intended, but it’s not as accurate as a probe.

And, forget about those el cheapo moisture meters. They don’t really measure moisture they measure ionic reaction. Probe a glass of distilled water and watch the meter read “dry”. Conversely, the salts in dry soil may give you a “moist” reading. Further, they are not durable and go out of calibration very easily resulting in false readings.

Here’s an endorsement today from an experienced, highly respected interior plantscaper.