dg said:
downwardsfromzero said:
I just gave up and sprayed the plants with thiacloprid (ahem).
thats crazy...
I just spent nearly a year religiously spraying the cacti with a carefully formulated essential oil blend which appeared to be working. My windows, however, were suffering from limescale by the end of this time. I thought I could stop spraying for the winter but the infestation quickly reappeared, causing crusting of the growth zone (again). My poor cactus had been lovingly nurtured back to health for actually two years, struggling on in the face of this crusty adversity.
I had recently cleaned out my shed and found some
thiacloprid spray so I just thought "f**k it, this will definitely work!" And it did, and I only used a tiny amount, twice. The concentration of active ingredient in the spray is 150 mg/L "in a ready-to-use aqueous solution".
I'm not proud of this and normally I never use chemical pesticides.
Neonicotinoids are especially evil; I figured that one small instance of indoor use might not bring about global ecological collapse. I'll never know if my peruvianus mites would have evolved into a superintelligent, ultra-compassionate hyperbeing or something in a few million years' time but frankly they can for the moment bugger off. Good riddance!
Please forgive me for the 900 µg of thiacloprid I released onto my windowsill. Yes, it was crazy.
shakan27 said:
on a side note my cacti seem to enjoy being misted with water, they turn deeper shades of color after
My cacti loved regular misting, too. One of my peruvianus/peruviani :? in a rather small pot grew nearly 2ft in 6 months at a diameter of 2.5".