How Not to Kill Your Potted Fruit trees and Vegetables

How NOT to kill potted vegies and fruit…

Top Tips from a converted pot plant murderer

 Tip 1 Your potted plants do have a serious mother/father fixation. They are dependent upon you for their every need. Just like children with separation anxiety.

Bring in the babysitter if you go away. Preferably someone who will lavish love on them so when you get back, they’ll be looking better than when you left.

I suggest teenage children are not good plant baby sitters. They are likely to sleep all day, party all night and completely forget the pots ‘til an hour before you get home.

Tip 2 Wave some food in their direction regularly. Anorexic plants tend to go yellow, lose leaves, and generally start to look thinner and scrawnier than when you first brought them hone from the nursery. Seaweed is not a food, unless of course your plant has a hankering for sushi. Give it a decent feed up with organic liquid or pelletised feeds ‘til it’s looking like it intends to grow, then ease off a little.

Tip 3 Attend to their personal hygiene. While they don’t need deodorant, the indoor plants do need a shower to clean them up occasionally. Dust just doesn’t cut it for the glamorous indoor varieties who love glossy, clean leaves at all times.

Tip 4 Keep an eye out for plant head lice. Well, kind of… mealy bugs and scale LOVE to suck the living daylights out of the plants. I wonder if they itch too? A loving spray with Eco Oil will keep both these little devils under control.

Tip 5 Have you ever had a tapeworm? I hear they are selling them now in capsule form for folks who want to lose weight. Plants get worms too and if they are wriggling around in the pots it spells green death. Worms will create tunnels that the water drains straight through, dehydrating your poor green baby. A solution of water with Condy’s crystals will kill the worms in pots.

Tip 6 Plants love to renovate. Well, let’s call it that anyway. Repot them when the roots are growing out the base of the pot, when the potting mix has drained away or when they get a bit top heavy and the pot falls over continually. Use only the best materials. (Chandelier equivalents rather than the regular cheap light fittings please.) A good potting mix like Searles Kickalong Organic is perfect.

Well, off you go and take a look at your babies- How are they?