All my plants are dead!

Harimum

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OK, I admit it, I'm a nerd and I have agoraphobia so I rarely leave the house (other than grocrery shopping which I can just about manage) but I like to grow herbs on my kitchen shelf and I had all these gorgeous and beautiful smelling plants in my kitchen and in the space of 48 hours they've all died! I spend most of my waking hours cleaning or cooking or looking after the baby but in just 2 days all my plants have died!

I'm so sad! I think they're called 'fungus gnats' but I noticed there were tiny little flies in the kitchen, I can't use bug spray as I have a young baby and I don't want him to breathe in chemicals but all my beautiful plants are dead and I just know it was those nasty little flies!

I can't close my kitchen window as my rabbit sleeps in the kitchen and cooking smells would irritate her eyes (she has the run of the house but she has to sleep in the kitchen as she would chew wires if we weren't watching her) So these damn flies get in and they've killed all my lovely plants!

Bah!
 

Hillary

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*hands you my electric fly swatter*

My baby orange tree has aphids. You have my sympathies.
 

reigningcatsndogs

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Fungus gnats shouldn't kill the plant. They're just annoying like crazy, but you can buy little yellow sticky things that you put in your plants and the gnats are attracted and stick and die. It sounds to me like it might be spider mites. You can barely see them -- tiny little red dots that move on the underside of the leaves. The tell tale sign is what looks like little webs or dust bunny sort of guys where the leaves join the stem. They can kill a plant very quickly. If you have hibiscus or gardenias or jasmine inside, you will know because the first sign is, just before the bud opens, it looks like it was cut off just below the bud. Later on you'll see the webs and the mites. They travel like crazy from plant to plant. They are very dificult to get rid of. We have tried various levels of chemicals, biologicals, everything. Spider mites hate humidity, and you can sometimes kill them by putting the plant in a clear bag, sealing it up and letting it sit for a few days. More often than not, though, you will get mold that way. Others may have more ideas or suggestions though.
 

Joe270

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House plants can be really tough to maintain. Oh, yeah, they always look great in the store, just try to keep them that way.

Obviously, I have a brown thumb.

However, I recently discovered why every plant we ever buy dies. Or, at least one reason. Our tap water. In San Antonio, Texas and here in Vegas, the water is too hard for the plants. It kills them over time. The calcium does something to the roots.

If you live where there is hard water, try osmosis water or bottled water for your plants.

Or you could just give up and blow them to smithereens with explosives like I did. One big 'boom', and I don't have a plant problem any more.
 

Joe270

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Baking soda kills red spider mites, what we call 'chiggers' in Texas. Works like a charm and won't hurt the kids.

Or, like I said, explosives are very effective.
 

limitedtimeauthor

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Not to be alarmist, but make sure you don't have any gas leaking in the house. I had a beautiful rosemary plant die from that. That was my only warning about the gas leak.

ltd.
 

Joe270

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A gas leak, eh? Interesting. Very interesting.

That could do the trick, too, Harimum. Just put some aluminum foil into the microwave, set it to 10 minutes with a five minute delay.

Nice suggestion, Limited.
 

aadams73

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Boil a few cloves of garlic in water. Spray the plants down with the water. The bugs hate it and it's safe for the family. Soapy water works well too(dishwashing soap)
 

GeorgeK

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House plants can be really tough to maintain. Oh, yeah, they always look great in the store, just try to keep them that way.

Obviously, I have a brown thumb.

However, I recently discovered why every plant we ever buy dies. Or, at least one reason. Our tap water. In San Antonio, Texas and here in Vegas, the water is too hard for the plants. It kills them over time. The calcium does something to the roots.

If you live where there is hard water, try osmosis water or bottled water for your plants.

Or you could just give up and blow them to smithereens with explosives like I did. One big 'boom', and I don't have a plant problem any more.

Then just import your houseplants from Kentucky. We've got purple basil growing like weeds as a border plant around the river bamboo. It's major danger is the deer looking for a quick salad. We are on a well and the water is so hard it is off the scale for hardness. But don't fret, hard water ususally means soft arteries...unless you smoke.
 

reigningcatsndogs

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You don't ever boil your water in the microwave to sort of clean it or purify it, do you? Aparently if the water is boiled that way, cooled and then used, it is very harmful to them and will kill them quickly. And so will overwatering -- that's easy to do and very common, and can just sort of sneak up on ya.
 

Siddow

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You have a rabbit that sleeps in your kitchen and you're worried about your baby being exposed to pesticides? Mmkay.

One thing I found that helps with the gnat population (I used to have a ton of houseplants) is to use a soap spray. Just a bit of dish soap in a spray bottle, fill with water, and douse the plants (well, I guess the new ones you'll be getting) daily, foilage and dirt.
 

Hillary

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Holy hell, people boil the water they give plants? Seriously? Is there a bigger waste of time on the planet? They deserve to have dead plants.
 

Harimum

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Thanks for the advice guys.

You have a rabbit that sleeps in your kitchen and you're worried about your baby being exposed to pesticides? Mmkay.

My rabbit sleeps in a little bed of her own and uses a litter tray just like a cat or dog and she's had all her vaccinations! And I will say that as well as being agoraphobic I'm also obsessed with cleanliness to the point of OCD. Any visitors to our home take off their shoes at the front door and I have freshly washed sheets laid down on the carpet before I let my son crawl around there.

Needless to say he doesn't have any actual physical contact with the rabbit at this point but when he does learn to walk I'm pretty sure that the risk of passing on my 'fear of germs' to him is far greater than any risk posed by his petting our clean, vaccinated and domesticated house-trained rabbit.

As I said:
I spend most of my waking hours cleaning or cooking or looking after the baby

Doesn't make me sound very exciting but at least I know that I'm not a bad mother who exposes her baby to filth and animal pathogens.
 
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Unique

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Fungus gnats. It's not the flying part that kills the plants, it's the ... ready?

the maggots of them that live in the soil chewing your roots. Your potting soil was contaminated.

If you get new plants you can re-sterilize your soil (a new bag!) by putting it in a gallon ziplock and setting it in the sun to bake.
 

Harimum

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thanks Unique, yeah I read that too. I think you're right. I was advised to use Neem oil as it apparently kills the larvae and true enough, when I examined the roots of the dead seedlings it seemed like they'd been 'bitten' off at the root level and there WERE larvae in the soil where the roots should have been.

It was pretty disgusting. I've thrown away the bag of soil and am going to be mega-careful when I buy the next one. Funnily enough I was told that growing Basil in your kitchen should repel the flies yet my basil plant was the first to succumb!

Kind of like when I was told that placing orange peel in the soil of your dragon tree will repel the cat but then my cat ran past me with a piece of orange peel in her mouth...

She still carried on urinating in the pot of the Dragon Tree and alas... He is no more... *sniff! His name was 'Bruce' (the Dragon tree, similar to a Yucca) as Bruce Lee's real name means Little Dragon and Bruce was a Dragon Tree and he was little. Sadly he didn't survive the naughty cat desecrating his soil and I haven't kept Dragon Tree's since... :(
 

Harimum

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I keep reading that as all my pants are dead. I was worried for the chocolate pants, since they will never go out of style.

ROFL ... when I think of 'pants' I think of underwear (UK terminology) so I'm thinking of chocolate underwear and wondering... who buys those? And in these days of global warming... who would WEAR those!:roll:

ewww! Sticky Pants! ;)
 

joyce

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If they were flying around, you might have white flys. I do know that spider mites are very, very common in dealing with certain houseplants. Try the baking soda remedy, since it sounds harmless. I know that both are hard to contain sometimes and will quickly kill your plants, especially something delicate like an herb. If you use a pesticide, spray them outside and perhaps leave them under a shady tree, out of direct sunlight, until the pests are gone. Rinse and bring them inside. I use to own a garden center and that is what I told people with similar problems. Good luck.
 

Unique

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Kind of like when I was told that placing orange peel in the soil of your dragon tree will repel the cat but then my cat ran past me with a piece of orange peel in her mouth...

oh, my. your cats sound like my cats. lovable scoundrels, aren't they?
 

Harimum

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I keep reading that as all my pants are dead. I was worried for the chocolate pants, since they will never go out of style.

My chocolate (chocolate-coloured, not made-of-chocolate) 'pants'/'trousers') are my mainstay! They go with anything! Other than edible underwear of course! ;)