Top 16 PATSP posts of 2011

2011 was a weird year for my relationship with the blog, which I've recently described -- ad nauseam -- so coming up with this list was a stranger experience than usual. I had a lot of good stuff at the beginning of the year, I think, and then basically nothing after July. But it was a very good year for photos, and if pressed, I imagine I can come up with nice things to say about some of the text too. So here are the highlights of 2011:

16. Music Video: "Russian Unicorn" (Bad Lip Reading / Michael Bublé) (29 Sep 2011)


Okay, so this is kind of a cheat, 'cause I didn't have anything to do with making it. But I'm still unbelievably fond of the song,¹ and wanted another chance to say so, because it's worth repeating. Also it's my list and you can't stop me.


15. Wednesday morning Marcia, Jan, and Cindy picture (25 May 2011)


Don't know what became of Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, of course: no way to tell them apart from any other robin,² and the odds are unfortunately high that they didn't all survive to the fall. (The deck is stacked against robins to a surprising degree.) But one hopes. Same for barn swallows Greg, Peter, and Bobby, though we didn't get as much time to get to know them.


14. Random plant event: Breynia disticha 'Roseo-Picta' blooming (8 Aug 2011)


I'm not sure why this one makes it into the top posts post. I think I'm maybe just pleased by how strange the flowers are, and how well the photos turned out. Breynia turns out to be just full of surprises (if you bother to feed it), as you'll see later this year if I ever get it together to sort some photos.


13. In Which I Lose All Respect for the Burgess Seed and Plant Co. of Bloomington, IL (3 Mar 2011)


Not that I had a lot of respect to begin with. Included in the list mostly because "This Ficus is my god now!" still makes me chuckle.


12. Fungus Gnats: Like Puppies That Try To Fly Up Your Nose (15 Mar 2011)


I feel a little bad about writing a post to help people get rid of their fungus gnat infestations, 'cause I actually find fungus gnats kind of adorable.


11. Random plant event: Kalanchoe tomentosa flower (14 Jun 2011)


Not a fan of the plant (more accurately: they're not fans of me), but I hadn't seen the flowers before, and the photos turned out nicer than I'd expected.


10. Storm Review: 2011 Blizzard (2 Feb 2011)


Winter 2011-12 has been a huge disappointment so far: we've only had one snowfall of any consequence, and that snow was only around for a day or two before it all melted. But we've had good snows in the past, and winter's only 1/3 over, so there's still hope, I guess.


9. Pretty picture: Convallaria majalis flowers (23 May 2011)


It's a little too easy to take a nice picture of Convallaria majalis, actually.


8. Phalaenopsitrocity (28 Mar 2011)


2011 will be remembered as the year in which plant retailers finally gave up and decided to sell artificial plants instead.³ I don't do New Year's resolutions, never have, but if I did, I'd resolve to find a way to kill the market for dye-injected plants in 2012. All ideas welcome.⁴


7. Mary Richards and the Incredible Plant Lady (18 Feb 2011)


In which Helen Hunt is dethroned as the patron actress (possibly "actress mascot" would be more accurate? Less oxymoronic, anyway.) of PATSP and replaced by Mary Tyler Moore (with an assist from Valerie Harper).


6. Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum St. Swithin (3 Jun 2011)


Best orchid ever, yeah?


5. Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Houseplant (11 Apr 2011)
I had trouble figuring out what I was trying to say with this one, or whether I was trying to say anything at all. I'm not sure I ever figured it out, actually, but my readership sure seemed to like the post anyway.


4. List: Plants Which Someone on the Internet has Said Bring Bad Luck (12 Oct 2011)


I'm not sure if the people who read this post will come away less superstitious or more superstitious. It probably depends on how superstitious they were when they started reading it: people who were already prone to see plants as lucky or unlucky now have longer lists, and people who aren't, don't. But I tried.


3. Widower (Persea americana) (16 Feb 2011)


As I explained in last year's list, I try to leave off the plant profiles when making these lists, because the point of these best-of lists is to call attention to posts readers might otherwise have missed, and I figure the profiles are already linked in the sidebar so there's no need. But, also like last year, I'm making an exception for the profile I liked the best, because giant ground sloths and gomphotheres are were kind of awesome, and more people should know about them.


2. Pretty pictures: Rime ice (12 Jan 2011)


Several kick-ass pictures at the rime post, but this particular one is probably my favorite photo for the whole year of 2011.


1. All the Rumble Among the Jungle posts (14 Sep to 15 Nov 2011)


Probably cheating to include this, too, since the Rumble wasn't a single post, and y'all did at least half the work there, but, you know, the Rumble was a big deal. It kinda has to be #1.

-

¹ It may not be my favorite Bad Lip Reading song; there's like a four-way tie between "Russian Unicorn," "Black Umbrella (The Right Stuff)," "Morning Dew," and "Rockin' (All Night Long)." The one I listen to the most often, though, is "Rockin' (All Night Long)." It took a while to get into, but I listen to it all the time now.
² (Though the one that chirps with a lisp is probably Cindy.)
³ Quote from this article:

"We are an industry of plant nerds who hold our plants and Latin naming on a silver platter," says Olivia Sellards, Syngenta Flowers. "But we are first a service industry and should hold our customer demands before our personal preferences. Absolutely sell a (dyed) plant, a glittered poinsettia or a bunch of blue tie-dyed cut flowers. Remember, if they aren't buying real plants, consumers will buy fake ones."

Well. Cleeeeeeearly the solution is to blur the line between real and fake, then: take real plants and spray-paint, dye-inject, or glitter-bomb them until they look artificial. (That was my sarcastic voice, in case that was unclear.)
Also, Ms. Sellards: I care that you've created a plant that people can only enjoy once. This has nothing to do with Latin name snobbery; this is about deceiving customers and creating impossible expectations. It's fine to sell people plants they're clamoring for; my question is whether the customers know what they're getting. (I'm also upset with y'all for creating a tacky and garish product. But mostly the deceiving and the expectations-setting.)
I would also question whether it makes any sense to disparage an industry of plant sellers for holding their plants "on a silver platter." Ms. Sellards' thesis is that the plants should be . . . less important?
⁴ (#OccupyTheXylem!)

Fungus Gnats: Like Puppies That Try To Fly Up Your Nose

One of the things that eventually drove me away from the Garden Web House Plant forum (GWHPF) was the way people posted the same questions there over and over. It wasn't the same person asking the same questions, obviously, but, you know, you see anybody asking something you've answered thirty times already for other people, and you start to wonder why people think it's okay to ask you to type out an answer for their problem for fifteen minutes, but it's too much trouble for them to spend three minutes searching the archives.¹ Which leads to irritation.

And then my irritation would bleed through and I'd write subtly hostile, cranky responses, which would just convince the person asking the question that everybody in the Garden Web forums was hostile and mean.² I suspect I started writing PATSP partly so I could have a place to link to for questions I'd seen a million times already, rather than spending half an hour answering them all over again from scratch.

By far, the most frequently re-asked question at the GWHPF went something like, HELP!!!1!!!1!! I just bought this plant and I don't know what it is but there are all these fruit flies flying around it all the time and this is the worst thing that has ever happened to me so please please please can somebody tell me what to do to make them all die because they are ruining my entire life!!1!!!!!1eleven!! (And yes, some of them were actually that dramatic. You would be amazed.)

So.


First, don't panic. Or, if you'd already started panicking, please stop, 'cause it's annoying to read anything with that many exclamation points.

Second: they're not "fruit flies," (Drosophila) they're fungus gnats (Bradysia). I realize you probably don't see a difference or care, but you have to know your enemy in order to defeat them.

Where do they come from? Most likely, they came in with a recently-purchased plant. If you haven't brought in a new plant, but you've repotted something recently, then your potting soil probably contains gnat eggs. Miracle Gro potting mixes in particular are consistently about 67% gnat eggs by weight,³ but gnats are a risk you take with any high-peat mix.

Why? I dunno. They just like peat, I guess.

What do they want? The adults lay eggs on wet soil, the eggs hatch into larvae, the larvae eat (mostly decomposing organic matter, not necessarily fungus per se), grow, pupate, and then they're transformed into beautiful . . . fungus gnats.⁴ Adults don't eat,⁵ so they don't live very long: they're focused on mating and laying eggs. Since the survival of the eggs depends a lot on moisture, adults are very interested in things that strike them as potentially wet. Which means that sometimes, they will try to fly up your nose or in your mouth. Also one will occasionally find them drowned in unattended cups of coffee, or hovering near sinks.

Are they hurting my plants? Probably not. The larvae are capable of feeding on the fine root hairs of plants, but even if they do, this would only harm plants that were very young or very weak. Living tissue is probably not their first choice anyway.

How do I make them go away? You have many options here, with varying levels of ease, expense, and effectiveness.

Personally, I would recommend either watering less often or doing a soil change. If the soil the larvae are in goes completely dry, they die, and then you don't have a next generation of adults. It may take a while, especially if you have a lot of plants, bring home new plants often, or have a lot of plants that will die if they get too dry, but if you're consistent and patient, it should happen.

Letting plants dry between waterings is what I personally do. I bring in new plants often enough that we usually have a few fungus gnats around at any given moment, but considering the number of plants here, a few is as good as none. And honestly, I kind of like them.⁶

Soil change can be thorough (shake off every bit of soil from the roots and replace with all-new soil from a brand-new bag) or partial (shake off some of the soil and replace it with a faster-drying mix, like potting soil cut with perlite, coarse sand, aquarium gravel, aquatic soil, etc.). Thorough soil replacement may be more stressful for the plant, but it should stop the gnats immediately, assuming the replacement mix is clean. Partial replacement is easier on the plant, but won't fix the problem as fast. Some of the old soil will still be there; it'll just be drying out faster.

Another option: sticky traps. I don't like sticky traps. They sound good in theory -- they're just pieces of yellow cardboard with adhesive on them. Gnats land on the cardboard and then can't fly away again, so gradually you wind up with fewer and fewer gnats flying around.

In my personal experience with sticky traps at work, mostly the traps stick to leaves and hands, not to bugs, and when they do function as advertised, you then get to look at a brilliant yellow piece of cardboard that's covered in dead insects, which . . . makes a statement, certainly, but I don't think it's going to catch on in New York.

Soil drenches are another option. If you're going to go this route, a product based on Bacillus thuringiensis ssp. israelensis, or "BT," is probably the way to go. Some brand names are Gnatrol and Knock Out Gnats; several "mosquito dunks" also use BT and can be used instead, if you don't find gnat-specific preparations.⁷ BT is a bacterium that produces a protein which screws up the larvae's digestive systems and kills them. It's organic and safe around people or pets. One may have to re-treat once or twice before the gnats completely go away.

Several people at Garden Web swear by the potato method, which is: slice a potato in half. Lay the cut end on top of the soil. The fungus gnat larvae will find the potato, get excited, and start chowing down. After a few hours, you can pick the potato back up, with all the larvae now on it, and throw it away. Or you can slice off a section and put it back on the soil again. I'm not sure this is sufficient to eliminate a gnat infestation all on its own, but it might speed up the process if you decide to reduce watering, and the more larvae you can get rid of, the fewer adults you have to see.

A simple and fairly cheap solution for small houseplant collections: spread a thin layer (maybe 1/4 inch or 6 mm) of coarse sand on top of the soil in your houseplants. The adults can't get through the sand to lay eggs, and the larvae can't get through the sand to become adults, so the problem disappears in one generation. Plants so treated will stay wet longer, since water will have a harder time evaporating from the soil surface, but I suppose one could always scrape the sand back off again after two or three weeks, if it's really a problem.⁸


Actual pesticides like pyrethrins, imidacloprid, etc. are not, I think, necessary, nor will most of them even be effective, either because of their targets (if the label doesn't specifically say it will kill fungus gnats, it probably won't) or their mode of application (pyrethrins have to make direct contact with an organism to kill, and break down quickly -- they're useless for a fungus gnat larva an inch below the soil). There might be a role for a soil drench of neem oil with dishwashing liquid, if you're going to insist on a pesticide, but I think the other methods will probably work just as well as poison, and some of them are very cheap and easy. I mean, technically, watering less often should save you money. Just not very much of it.

That's pretty much everything I know about fungus gnats and what to do with them. If there's something I haven't covered, or if there's something I did address that you think I got wrong, feel free to leave a question or comment. Alternate methods of dealing with fungus gnats are welcome too.

-

¹ Of course, the people posting questions sort of are being responsible and doing their own research, in a way -- if you have a plant problem, it makes sense to go to a plant-related forum to ask somebody about it. And if you've never been to GW before, you might not be able to appreciate how big it is, you might not be able to locate the search field, you might try to search and wind up getting gibberish back, if GW's code is being glitchy.
Really I was the one with the problem. I wasn't responsible for answering fungus gnat questions, and if I didn't want to answer them, then I could have just not answered them, rather than making it all about me and getting upset.
² Which, last I checked, was mostly true, actually, but it wasn't always that way, and it certainly doesn't have to be. The dynamics of online communities is perhaps a topic for another time.
That, plus feeling obligated to answer people's questions even though I wasn't, made it sort of a bad place for me to be, overall, and I'm glad I'm done with posting there. I do go back every few months to look around. Sometimes I look to see if I can find a blog topic, though I don't remember that ever actually working out.
³ (Exaggeration for comic effect; I'm sure it's less than 20%.)
⁴ Not every ugly duckling becomes a swan, yo.
⁵ (Pretty sure I read this somewhere at some point.) (UPDATE: Aralia left a comment with a link saying that this isn't true; adult fungus gnats do eat. So never mind.)
⁶ Yes, it's alarming to inhale one accidentally, or have one flying around your face for a few seconds like it's trying to figure out how to get in, but it doesn't actually hurt you. I mean, if you inhale a gnat, you're definitely getting the better end of that experience.
Around here, they come and go -- we are presently having a high-fungus-gnat period, which is why this post -- but I kind of think they're cute. Like puppies! Puppies that try to fly up your nose!
⁷ The difference, as I understand it, is that mosquito BT is made to dissolve slowly, over a long period, to kill mosquitoes that attempt to lay eggs in whatever body of water the "dunk" is sitting in, while gnat BT is usually either made to be dusted directly on the surface of the soil or made to dissolve more or less immediately in water. I'm fuzzy on this, though, having never used either product, and I've only occasionally seen the mosquito dunks.
⁸ This might be the place to note that decorative moss or stones on top of the soil will also keep the soil wetter longer. If you have such items on your soil, you should take them off at least until the fungus gnat problem is resolved. (I would actually advise not putting them back on again ever, but that's just me.)