Re: D. adelae

John Taylor [The Banshee] (rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.OZ.AU)
Wed, 31 Mar 93 10:24:49 +0000

>The plants I have in my Crystal Lite indoor greenhouse here
>at work, by a window and under lights, are flowering. So
>far D. adelae and P. primuliflora have stalks and/or blooms.
>I don't expect any seed from D. adelae, but seeing the flowers
>should be interesting. As I recall from reading they aren't
>much more exciting than those on D. prolifera. Speaking of which,
>mine are starting to come back from cold weather dormancy. So
>are the aphids. These things are like damned zombies, coming
>back after being poisoned repeatedly. They are only slightly
>less annoying than squirrels.
>
> R.

You're right - D. adelae has pretty boring flowers. They are very small,
dull dark browny-red in colour - even the red-flowered form described by
Slack wouldn't be much better. You won't need any seed if you wanted more
plants - they multiply all by themselves...

We have the same problem with aphids here. There is very little you can do
about them except either squash them (if there's only a few and are easy to
get at) or spray them with pyrethrum or similar (make sure you actually hit
them, or it won't work). Basically, this is the only technique that seems
to work - just keep checking your plants for the new outbreaks before they
reach plague proportions...

There was a homebrew cocktail for getting rid of insects & cats/dogs which
may work for squirrels too. It basically consisted of white vinegar, super
red-hot chillis (the hotter, the better - but be careful with them!), ground
pepper and wormwood leaves. You soak put all the ingredients in a jar and let
it stew for a week or so, then carefully strain to remove the solids (which
will block your sprayer). Spray this on your plants, and the wormwood repels
most animals, and the chilli and pepper fixes the ones that try to eat your
plants. DISCLAIMER: I haven't used this before so it may not work and may
harm your plants - I don't know. (Try it on your "weed" species first...)

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| John Taylor [The Banshee] | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology |
| rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | Department of Applied Physics |
| MOKING IS A HEALTH HAZARD. | Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
/.