Basil rising out of the ashes

So one thing I didn't do last week when I lamented the demise of my basil plants was take a picture of the two remaining basil plants. Here they are.

So, you can probably guess why I didn't show them before. I just didn't want to embarrass them.
But there is some good news. First, I can't see any signs of whiteflies anymore. Most books say that if you wipe out two successive generations of whiteflies, you're eradicated them. I can only keep my fingers crossed. Second, that pitiful stick you see to the left--I'm not sure if you can see it if you zoom in, but there are actually tiny little basil leafs growing from them already.

So, perhaps the basil will live another day after all.

As for the Aerogarden, I'm still waiting for my package from Aerogrow which contains the replacement pump. My goal is to plant them by the first week of June.

In other news, one of my favorite gardening stores, Gardener.Com, is offering 15% off your order if you order $50 or more (just click on the banner to the right to go to their site). This might be a good opportunity for those of you who have Aerogardens to stock up on some Aerogarden essentials. Here are some examples of what they offer:

AeroGarden® Shelves

AeroGarden® 7 Pod Pro-100 Seed Kits

AeroGarden™ Pro 100 Replacement Bulbs, Set of 2

AeroGarden® 3-Pod Elite Grow Bulb

AeroGarden® 6-Pod Elite Grow Bulbs

Saying Goodbye to the Basil

It was kind of a sad day today in the Indoor Gardener World. Remember the basil that started off this blog, which we'd raised from nothing and then transplanted into pots? Even until today the plants were still going strong, but at the end of the day, the whitefly infestation was just so large that I had to say goodbye to them.

I did get the Whitefly Traps from Gardener's Supply Company, and they worked really well. They come as yellow cards wrapped in plastic. You unpeel the plastic, which reveals a super-sticky surfact. You then attach to a metal stake. Whiteflies are attracted to the yellow color, fly right into it, and get stuck there.

This picture is not for the squeamish, but here you can see it worked. Just after a day, there were a couple dozen whiteflies stuck to two traps I put out.

Unfortunately, when I examined the basil plants further, it seems I set the traps up too late. Every day after I shook the plants free of flies, I would come back the next day to see more of them. They say that a female whitefly can lay up to 200-400 eggs at a time, and I don't doubt it. When I looked at my precious basil against the light, I can see they already sucked the juice out of a lot of the leaves, leaving blotches. While it was probably still safe to wash and use for cooking, I was too repulsed to do that.

So, I took the final "Class Photo" of the Aerogarden Class of 2008 (this reminds me of the photo they took in the movie The Untouchables before everyone started getting killed :P

And then, I proceeded to start throwing out the plants. The Red Rubin basil had been one of my strongest plants, but it was the first to grow. Notice here how since I transplanted it into the pot, the root system grew very nicely.

Similar story for the globe basil

I also threw out the Thai basil, leaving me with two Genovese basil plants. I'll check tomorrow to see if the flies are back, and if so, those will have to go too. All in the name of ridding my apartment of all whiteflies before starting the new Aerogardens, which I've decided will be 1) Mesclun Mix, 2) Snow Peas, and 3) the Classic Aerogarden Herb Kit.

Needless to say, it's now personal. My basil is gone, and now I just have to see if the flies have gotten to my prize gardenia or other ornamental plants.

When I set up the new Aerogardens, I will be following these steps:

A) setting up whitefly sticky traps everywhere
B) setting the light to go on during the day and go off at night so as to not attract them during the dark hours
C) At the first sign of whiteflies, spraying with anything I can find. I've heard that soapy water works well. I also have a bottle of natural essential oils I got from Williams Sonoma that I can try out, although as natural as they are I'm still squeamish about using it on edible plants. Finally, there's an interesting recipe for garlic spray, which I hear whiteflies hate.

Here's a great page of suggestions from others who share this plight.

Wish me luck.

By the way, my plan to plant the Aerogardens is on temporary hold while I wait for a new replacement pump from AeroGrow (I bought it for $9.95 on the official Aerogarden site).

Transplanting Aerogarden Parsley into Containers

Remember the parsley Aerogarden I kept going? Well, the parsley was still alive after all these months, even with no nutrient tablets. In fact, the root systems had gotten impressively thick. Here's what it looked like:

And even though the plants in the living room had gotten whiteflies, it looks like they stayed away from the parsley. I noticed that the pump on the unit had stopped working (since this unit is a few years old, it's probably to be expected), and while the lights were dutifully going on and off every day, the water in the unit started to get stagnant. So I decided to pull the plug.

Interestingly, after letting the Aerogarden sit for months and months, it grew some odd deposits of salt and minerals on the outside. I'm not sure what the cause of this is, but it must have to do with the evaporation of what was in the nutrient tablets. The good news is, a quick rinse in the sink and the unit was as good as new.

Using the same technique I used to transplant my Aerogarden plants to containers back when I had the basil plants, I potted the parsley into containers.

I put them in the bedroom, far, far away from the living room and the whiteflies. I'm not sure if they'll last (you might recall my attempts to transplant sage didn't work), but I think the good, thick root systems will give them a fighting chance.

So now, all three Aerogardens are empty. I may need to find a replacement pump for the one unit, and of course I need to get those whitefly traps just to make sure the whiteflies don't proliferate and find their way back to the new plants I'm growing in the Aerogarden.

The Whiteflies are back...and the war begins!

So, as faithful readers of this blog know, I suffered an infestation of whiteflies which cut short a promising lettuce Aerogarden and which tormented me during the tomato Aerogarden. Before planting a new series of Aerogardens, I have been waiting to give enough time for the whiteflies to be completely eradicated. The last thing I want is to start up a new Aerogarden and start the cycle all over again (with snowpeas and mesclun no less, plants which I suspect will be whitefly magnets)

Faithful readers of this blog will also know that in the living room, far far away from the kitchen that the whiteflies took over, I have my houseplants. I have a money tree, a gardenia, a spaphff..spaphiff..spapfiff...a peace plant, and of course my beloved basil plants from the original Basil Aerogarden which started this blog. 

To my dismay, when I watered the basil plants yesterday, I was pruning the white flowers off the tops of one of my basil plant, and one of the flowers flew away. It didn't take me long to realize that it was a whitefly. I was sad to see that the whiteflies had made it all the way across my apartment by now. And I am mad. Spittin' and Stinkin' mad. 

This means war. 

The first thing I did was to do what I should have done a long time ago. I went to the Gardener's Supply Company to buy Whitefly Traps. Now I admit, I am skeptical that these will help, but I'm desperate. And the reviews on Gardener's Supply Company seem pretty good. I think the consensus is that while the traps don't always clear the entire problem, at least it helps control it. 

The better solution, if these were outdoor plants, would be to get a bag of ladybugs, but of course for indoor plants, the one nastier thing than a whitefly infestation is a ladybug infestation.

I will also take the advice Corinne posted as a comment a few months ago and try to fill a jar with sweet stuff.

I didn't think whiteflies went after basil (they seemed to like the parsley much better), but I guess when you're a starving whitefly you don't get particular. 

As for the basil, I will probably end up making one last glorious batch of basil pesto, and then ending the basil plants that I had raised since they were young happy seeds. 

Wish me luck--and join me in the first to eradicate whiteflies from the world, or at least from my apartment. It's only once I know the whitefly situation is under control that I can start the new Aerogardens. 

Sunday May 3, 2009 Amazon Gold Box Deal

Mother's Day is coming up next week, and if you're checking this blog out on Sunday May 3 (and who isn't) here's a great gift idea for Mom.

Amazon has a Gold Box Deal today only with the best price I've seen yet on an Aerogarden.

For $99.99, you get the silver AeroGarden Classic with 7 herb pods AND a free "Herb and Serve" dressing and marinade maker. I admit I am jealous because I paid $50 more and didn't get the Herb and Serve.

Just click here and enjoy! Today's Gold Box.

If you missed this deal, don't worry, I'll post new ones I stumble across here. And you can always get flowers for Mom this year! :)

Coming soon to the Indoor Gardener...Aerogarden Snow Peas and Salads

Over the course of this blog, we've covered basil, herbs, cherry tomatoes, and romaine lettuce. The basil was an overwhelming success. The herbs yielded some great parsley plants. The cherry tomatoes were a little bit of a disappointment, as was the romaine lettuce. My beautiful indoor garden was then overrun by little critters.


Getting rid of the tomato plants seemed to get rid of the whiteflies, but I'm still paranoid that they'll be back. So my kitchen and the Aerogarden area is due for a top-to-bottom cleaning, and the kitchen window is going to stay closed.


But in the meantime, I went to the Aerogarden Outlet to try to find some seed packs on sale. I decided on these:


I'm most excited about the snow peas. I'm not holding out much hope for the baby greens or the mesclun after my experiences with the romaine lettuce, but if I can get just a few salads out of it, I'll consider it a success. As luck would have it, I recently started to try to lose weight with Nutrisystem diet, and one of the requirements of that diet is to eat lots of vegetables.

As Douglas MacArthur once said, "I shall return". Stay tuned!

Aerogarden Seed Starter Kit: Starting an Outdoor Garden Indoors

Hi everyone. As you know, I'm currently down to one Aerogarden that's only growing parsley(and the parsley is still growing strong, even with no nutrient tablets left). At some point in the spring or summer I'll restart the Aerogardens (and this blog), but for now, I figured we'll let it rest.

I did want to tell you about a pretty cool product that the makers of Aerogarden makes: the Seed Starter kit.

Back before I got into indoor gardening, I was an outdoor gardener. I loved starting my crops from seed. My dad always wondered why I bothered, when I could go to the local greenhouse and buy fully-grown plants. But there was always just something cool about starting a garden from a tiny seed, nuturing it as a seedling, climatizing it against the elements as a young plant, and then watching it mature and bear fruit. Starting from a plant always seemed like cheating to me :)

The problem I always had was that starting seedlings the traditional way was just too darned messy. I had Burpee Seed 'n' Start kits which were like ice cube trays, but even those got messy and often the seeds wouldn't sprout or the seedlings would die after attempting to weather them or if they were planted outside too early.


Well, Aerogarden has come up with a great solution, the
AeroGarden Garden Starter Tray (7-Pod & 6-Pod). This ingenious addition to your Aerogarden allows you to start up to 70 seedlings in the controlled environment of the Aerogarden.

Like any other Aerogarden plant, whatever you plant will grow fast, strong, and tall with the constant watering, the bright artificial sunlight, the optimal light cycles, and the nutrients. Unlike a regular Aerogarden, once your plants are of a large size and start to outgrow the unit, you can transplant them into your victory garden, where they'll continue to grow large and tall and give you a bountiful harvest in the Fall.

So if I had an outdoor garden, I'd definitely get this to start my garden. You can basically plant anything you can think of, and you'll be giving your plants the best possible chance to mature into full garden plants.