Archive for April, 2011
Grow House Features
Whatever you grow in your garden or greenhouse, you’re sure to have come across aphids. They’re a group of prolific pests that are commonly described as greenfly and blackfly, although there are also a variety of other pests including the woolly aphid, root aphids and the cabbage aphid.
Aphids cause a range of problems. Their main form of attack is to suck the sap from fresh young shoots. In a greenhouse this can have a devastating effect on early crops as the warmer climes inside the glasshouse encourage these bugs to breed very speedily. Fresh pink buds and leaves of roses and just about anything else sprouting in spring get covered in layers of these green or black bugs. The range of plants affected is immense and the initial results are stunted growth, and weaker plants. However the problems don’t stop there. Heavily infested plants can actually die. Aphids can also spread disease. Just as mosquitoes can pass malaria to humans in areas where this disease is prevalent, aphids can spread plant viruses. These can be debilitating for crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, peas, marrows and squashes and many more besides.
Tags: aphids, black bugs, blackfly, egg stage, greenfly, leaf surfaces, marrows, pink buds, sticky honeydew, woolly aphidRelated posts
The Greenhouse and the Greenhouse Contractor
First you began germinating Fig Marigolds, Hortensia, and Lavenders in your guest bedroom, during the winter, with a humidifier and fluorescent lamps. That summer, you’re turned on by the beauty and resilience of aquatic plants, so you convert your kids’ giant plastic pool to cultivate sacred purple and pink water lilies and lotuses, like the Nelumbo nucifera, symbolizing eternal life in Buddhism. Next, you want to create a delicious garden to grow exotic New Zealand yams, Jicamba, and Tamarillo tomatoes. Your wife is enamored of a green lifestyle as well, and suggests building a greenhouse, imagining all the rare and flamboyant floral gems to populate it.
You start looking at pictures of them, at the Garden Club, in rare manufacturer’s catalogues from the turn-of-the-century. You marvel at the beauty of their designs and the ingenuity of their systems. Another Garden Club member points out their luminous, pitched rooflines, the slender cypress roof bars, all double-grooved to hold glass and collect condensation. You feel like you’ve just stumbled on a lost civilization. You want a green house just like the Victorian 19th-century marvel you see in the picture.
Tags: american deserts, aquatic plants, environmental elements, horticultural libraries, nelumbo nucifera, pink water, plant lovers, temples in sri lanka, tropical rain forest, water liliesRelated posts