Balcony Make Over Pt.2

Bugs. Not only do they eat your plants, they are annoyingly hard to get rid of without drastic measures (pesticides). We had three different kinds of bugs: these little brown cocoon things that inch along the celling and hang on the edges of pots, scale (white bugs that look like bumps), and mildew bugs. The Magenta Flowers and the Purple Flowers had the scale — badly — and the potted orchids and peace lilies had mildew bugs.

Unfortunately for the poor plants, I didn't know the balcony was (badly) infested until it was too late for the potted orchids. They suffered badly and, when I finally realized it was bugs and started to treat it (q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol), only lasted for another month or so before dying. R.I.P orchids. We loved you.

Somewhere around here two new plants blew into one of the empty troughs and we randomly decided to plant a jackfruit tree seed in the potted orchids' pot (which surprisingly grew into a seedling/small sapling). (Jackfruit in the far right corner —>). Both were of the blow-ins were flowering plants that really loved to show off their flowers. One made pink-magenta flowers and the other made blue and yellow flowers.

The pink-magenta flowers were dubbed the "Floppy Plant" or "Floppy Flowers" as they flopped over the side of the trough. (Floppy Plant —>) These guys loved to grow and basically killed the other purple-yellow plant by cloaking it out (:<). Sadly, the Floppy Plant succumbed to mildew bugs and died. May you rest in peace Floppy Plant. *sniff*

(<— Purple and yellow plant.) The jackfruit seedling/sapling was quite the surprise; none of us thought that it would grow! Sadly, but unsurprisingly, it didn't grow any higher than a small sapling and didn't do too well.

For some reason it lost its leaves multiple times, stopped growing, and seemed to have trouble in its roots. It was for that and other reasons (like where we would put an actual tree 'when' it grew into one) we pulled it up. It was essentially a half living stick by then, though.

Thankfully, I was quick enough for the other plants. The Magenta Flowers was quite the long battle. By the time I knew the white bumps were bad, all the branches and all the leaves were covered in them. I spent a hours scraping off the bugs from the branches and stems of the leaves, applying rubbing alcohol here and there in attempts to stop them spreading.

The problem with scale is that it just keeps coming back so I had to keep scraping those little life-sucking blobs off my plant all the time, hoping that its healthy leaves would be spared from the invasion and the sad ones would recover. It took a long time for the Magenta Flowers to start blooming in full earnest and to finally be rid of scale, but it got there. Eventually.

The Purple Flowers were easier to cure. Essentially, I took scissors to all the most-infected stems, scraped some scale of the good ones, and let the plant grow back. Apparently these plants love being pruned because they exploded up in new health producing flowers like there was no tomorrow. Which is great, because I had my hands full with keeping the Magenta Flowers alive!

Around this time the lemon grass grew really happy and we had some yummy tea. The only sad thing about this awesome plant is that it needs a lot of pruning/pulling-away-all-dead-parts-to-make-way-for-new-ones and that I get itchy arms where the blades have touched. Still, worth it. Also, weeds blew in and liked to take up residence in the lemon grass and just won't stay dead. Either there's new seeds blowing in or they can grow back from roots — those are the only ways they can survive.

The Great And Long War Against The Bugs continues, but now we've reached the part where the 'real' makeover begins.