albert online

I’ve developed a new after-work routine this week. Leave work and head home and check on the plants regardless of the time and available daylight. The past few days I’ve noticed new holes in leaves, new brown spots, etc. and last night it paid off as I discovered one spider looking creature on one of the lettuce leaves. After killing it I did a few google searches and determined we’ve got maybe aphids, spider mites, and who knows what else. I was pretty happy with killing that one creature and hoped all was solved.

I woke-up this morning to discover that there were more holes on the leaves and it became obvious to me that I was not facing an army one. Following one of the pages I read the previous night I began to look at the underside of the leaves on almost every plant and discovered a few more here and there. I killed them off and yanked out leaves with black dots on them–I wasn’t sure if they were droppings or eggs. I went to work hoping I had finished them off.

To my dismay, I got home tonight to discover yet more damaged leaves. Armed with a flash light, I again began to examine the underside of the leaves.

I began with the tomato plant and discovering nothing moved onto the basil plant and zeroed in on a leaf with a nice round hole on it. I examined it with a flashlight, lifted it up and peeked underneath and discovered Exhibit 1:

Basil leaf and worm thingy

I inspected as much as possible all the other leaves and discovered a few more. Unlike the first one whom I granted a brief career in modeling the rest went straight between the mini gardening shovel and the balcony floor.

Next to be examined were the the mint leaves. Again, I looked under the damaged leaves (hmm … I should start looking under the un-damaged leaves as well) and after one or two (or maybe even the first) I discovered a similar worm looking creature. Here I present Exhibit 2:

Mint leaf and another worm thingy

As you can see, this is one fucking hungry little bugger. It too briefly tasted the modeling life before tasting crushed mint. (I have to admit I really enjoyed crushing the little shits on the basil and mint leaves as the leaves produced nice aromas.) I found a few more and they too enjoyed crushed mint fairly quickly after discovery.

Then I moved onto the lettuce pot and after a few leaves discovered an aphid looking thing:

Possibly aphid on lettuce

Lettuce, unfortunately, does not produce any aromas when crushed. Too bad. One or two more and then I discovered another one of the spider looking thing I saw the previous night:

Possibly spider-mite on lettuce

I discovered only one or two more of these and further inspections of the other leaves and plants yielded nothing and I called it a night.

I decided to water the lettuce and herbs pots but left the basil/tomato pot alone as it has a water well at the bottom and I found out that both basil and tomato plants only needed to be watered 2-3 times a week, not to mention that basil “hates” having water on its leaves.

Here’s hoping no more damaged leaves tomorrow morning! Else we’d really have to start looking into creating home-made fertilizer (organic of course).

Oh, and if you wanted a close-up look of the bugs, here they are:

Tonight's cast of characters