I brought all of mine in today too. I don't think that I have nearly as many as you, though.

Ugh, I know the feeling. We had a terribly cold and rainy week earlier this month, so I brought in all my plants. Then last week I noticed some pests on my succulents and then moved my entire collection outside again to treat/spray them.

Unfortunately the squirrel hazard is still too high to leave them all outside so after that I had to move everything back in again. My back was VERY sore after that!

At least most of my pots are small... if they were giant Trichocereus like yours I think I'd have a hard time getting out of bed the next day! Was happy to gift away my 6' Euphorbia trigona last year. I grew it faithfully to that size over nearly 10 years and now I don't have to move it around anymore. =)

Kevin

What pests did you noticed (I want to know what to look for!)

Red spider mites. =(

When doing my macro photography, I often use a clean paintbrush to dust off the leaves a little. In one of my photos I noticed a red speck in the background. Confirmed it was a mite with my loupe on that plant, plus a few other plants.

Since I had used the same brush on many plants over the past several weeks, the assumption is that I spread them around everywhere and therefore treated my entire collection (red spider mites are no joke).

Pretty sure I got them from my plants simply being outside. I've seen red predatory mites (they move very quickly) on my deck even before I put my plants out there so I figure they just came from the winds/leaves/squirrels.

I'll be rechecking my plants in a couple days and the week after that. Not expecting any further issues but it helps to check just in case.

What did you spray with Kevin...? You would think those predatory mites would be able to find a delicious meal but what can you say. Certain plants are mite magnets- stomatiums, conos, glotts, faucarias, titanopsis, etc.

It is so much work bringing everything indoors. I've left the jade's and haworthia's out, we are still having nights in the mid-high 40's so they're doing okay. The temperature differential between day and night really does wonders on growth, but everything will eventually have to come in.
Will have to spray everything twice before the month is over, tetrasan for mites and probably imidicloprid for everything else.

Kevin

Thank you , that is helpful. Hope you got rid of them - and I hope I don't find anything...

A question: here in the Netherlands we have no idea how a landscape looks with so little rain. We have each years about 700 / 750 mm of water (between 27 and 30 inches) So for this hobby to much water is a problem and the plants have to be covered. Do you have some pictures to show?

Thanks

Harry

My area has between 1200 and 1500mm/year according to records I've just looked at :-(. That's an average picked up from the Met. Assoc. site.

This could be an interesting topic for a 'winter thread', ppls general views from their parts of the world, whether it be rural, suburban, or urban....??

Yes Harry, with our temperate climates which brings with it the rain and low temps, the combination of both are killers for many of our plants. It would be nice to be able to grow them outdoors all year round, but then we wouldn't have our roses, and daffodils and all the other goodies in our green and pleasant gardens would we?

Gill

Rina - The only other things I found was a sneaky earwig and a couple gnats, which will die off on their own. Also hope you don't find anything either.

Minty - I used Avid. Wouldn't have sprayed so many plants but I wasn't being very smart and probably spread them all around myself. If there were no pests, I wouldn't have bothered to treat my plants because it's a lot of work and all those hours could have gone to be doing more fun things. =)

Harry - It's interesting how each of us has different challenges. Too much rain, humidity, heat, cold, or low winter light. We are really quite the diverse bunch.

What a lot of work for you folks in colder climates. Maybe you can pay a couple of high school students to help next spring.

:) NO no, it is lots of fun to have all my plants through my hands and study them thouroughly before summer / winter. By looking I know ( well: I think I know) what they need for the next season.

Harry,

Here are some pictures of vacant land from a real estate company. Most of the land around here doesn't look like this thanks to an underground aquifer that provides us with water for our homes and yards. There are many ranches that depend on the river for irrigation, and it is really quite beautiful here.

But we are a desert steppe so here is what it looked like before humans intervened:

Woah, would I like to see that once in my lifetime (and find -even isn't bigger than my fingernail- a real native cactus!!)

Thanks Noto.

Here's my place. Totally different

harry

Harry, Your neighborhood is lovely! Looks like a lot of farm land around you?

Here's a panoramic view of Carson Valley from the Sierra Nevada mountains just below Lake Tahoe--can't even see any sage brush from there. This is a pic from the Carson Valley Times digital newspaper--can't take credit for it.