Stuart Woodcraft

Spring is here, so it’s a good time for some cleaning. Not just for house stuff, but for plant stuff, too.

Sometimes I take my plants outside and give them a shower with the garden hose. Houseplants can gather a lot of dust, which isn’t great for the leaves, you know?

I think plants photosynthesize better when the leaves don’t have debris on them, but that’s just my theory.

Exhibit A. See this cute pep plant below.

This Peperomia obtusifolia used to live at my workplace. Now all of my office plants are home with me due to remote working. Their main light source used to be fluorescent ceiling bulbs.

Within a week I noticed the big leaf slowly perk up. It no longer receives light from above so it had to adjust. Now it faces the window and receives full sunlight there.

A lot of websites recommend wiping down leaves with a damp cloth, but no one has time for that. I think using the mist or shower setting of a hose attachment is much easier and more effective.

Some people use their shower or bathtub to wash plants off. A kitchen sink with a spray attachment would also do the trick.

It was warm and sunny a few weeks ago, so I gathered all the plants from Ian’s home office and took them outside for a field trip.

Here is the lineup. They look like plant criminals or something.

I like changing the hose attachment to the mist setting to be gentle, gentle.

As far as garden tools go, I really like this hose attachment because I don’t need to squeeze a spray trigger, which can get tiresome. There’s a nice switch on the back that flips on and off.

…and here we go!!

A great start. I misted the top to wash the dust off, but I also sprayed underneath the leaves.

These plants had a battle with spider mites a while ago. I saw the tell-tale webbing between the pots and leaves. Spider mites hide and cling to the underside of leaves, so I’m spraying underneath now as a preventative measure.

I also use a natural insecticide called neem oil to decimate mites, but I’ll cover that in a moment. The plant shower is first.

Everyone gets a shower, including all the cacti. The cactus on the right actually suffered the worst of the mites, so I cleaned it extra good.

It was a sunny day. Perfect weather for the spring cleaning. Here’s a closeup of the plants drying in the sunshine.

A lot of water can gather inside the pot after washing plants. If the pot has drainage holes at the bottom, remove any saucer so the water can freely drain out. If there are no drainage holes, or if the saucer cannot be detached, then hold onto the plant and gently tilt the pot upside down so the water can drain out from the top.

While the plants dried I prepared a neem oil spray. It only takes a small amount of neem oil to do the job.

My recipe: Fill a spray bottle full of water, add a splash of neem oil, plus a couple drops of dish soap. Shake it all up.

The neem oil disrupt mites on a hormonal level so they cannot reproduce, and the dish soap suffocates any adult mites. A double whammy. Mites can still be persistent though, so spray the plants every few days (for maybe a couple of weeks).

As mentioned earlier, neem oil is all natural and typically does not harm plants. I sprayed my houseplants liberally.

The spray looks white, but it will disappear as it evaporates. The oil coats the plant so it leaves behind a sheen.

I think that neem oil has a terrible smell. So it’s better to apply it outside, or open up the windows if spraying while inside the house. The smell will eventually go away as the plants dry.

The neem oil washes off easy. So after the mites are gone, you can give the plants another shower to remove the oil again.

Guard cat… Squid watches over the houseplants as they dry in the sun.

Here are the plants back in Ian’s office. Showered and happy! They should be good for another few months at least. I think cleaning plants every season is a good schedule.