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Mrs. McPoz washes them with insecticidal soap AND douses them with malathion.
 She gets the soil with malathion also.  (Still doesn't always work).

I'm thinking of moving a few plants outdoors for the summer, but
am worried about this problem of picking up bugs while they're
out there.  So far my plants have no bug problems inside the
house, and I hate to bring a problem inside in the fall.
Sigh.

The ones that will survive, put them out. Keep an eye on them during the
summer, wash off any bugs you see with a hose and light spray, and give
them a soap dip before you bring them in in the fall. They'll love you for
it!

Well, so much for not having bug problems in the house.  My bird of
paradise plant is infected with little black bugs that are probably
aphids.  I'm guessing that they were on the plant when I bought it
in early April, and have been breeding without my noticing since
then.  They seem to have sucked the life out of a couple of leaves
so far.  I sprayed last night with insecticidal soap.  Take that,
you little suckers!

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Speaking of yicky bugs (I realize this isn't the bugs item, but what
the heck), I also discovered bunches of white fly eggs (or larvae,
or whatever) on a couple of my pepper seedlings when I was moving them
outside to the cold frame.  Yuck!  More insecticidal soap was used.
Strangely enough, the white flies hadn't infested the tomato seedlings
that were right next to the peppers.  I guess the peppers taste 
better to them.

I also discovered disgusting scale bugs on several unwanted oak
tree saplings in my front yard.  I was planning to remove the
baby trees anyway, but now I can't compost them because the scale
creatures might infest something else.

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Co-op exten. office is in the county complex on Hogback, just north of
Washtenaw. Bear right, it's on the south (Washtenaw) side. Very helpful
people in there. I just wanted some info on herbs, and they made copies of
a booklet for me. Someone else brought in a tree branch, and they id'd it
for him and gave pruning suggestions.

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Real good idea. Sometimes that's the best way to go. Check your soil also,
as bugs sometimes live there, and come up to feed on the plant.

You doing herby things, Bill?

Hi Valerie, I figured out how to use the BBS.  Not sure if I am in the right
place, but does anyone have experience with moving vegetable plants IN for
the winter?  We dug up the mustard greens just a few days ago and put them
on a barely heated sunporch.  They already survived 20 degrees okay and seem
to be happy, but should I also be using grow lights?  The idea is to have
fresh vegetables all winter.  These were planted September.  Also have ta
tsoi, a Chinese vegetable that grows very slowly.  Do they need fertilizer?
Anything else that can be grown inside in winter light levels?  I don't expect
bug problems as there were none outside.  Nothing seems to like eating mustard
greens (including my roommate, who dug them up for me) but nothing else that
I planted in September came up, and they are good for us.

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My roommate has a book called Four Seasons Gardening which I should look into.
The mustards still look healthy.  They come up every spring by themselves.
I have seed to share.  It seems to have hybridized between red and green.

We have 3 dwarf citrus trees that we grow in pots. I carry themn in and out
once each way per year. They are heavy, but they take well to this treatment.
I even make limeaid from the limes, but the oranges are awful.

I can't imagein doing this with vegetables, but if you're going to have any
luck, I think you would have to grow them in something you could carry.
Transplanting is just to stressful.

Sure enough, my new indoor vegetable plants now have little sap-sucking bugs
on the bottom surfaces of the leaves, but only the Chinese cabbage (ta tsoi?),
not the mustard greens.  It helped to be forewarned, I never would have
looked.  On the theory that the natural predators got left behind outdoors,
I played the part of a predator by just wiping them off with my thumb.  I hope
I can keep the population density down that way all winter.

The bugs (they have wings) are definitely more than; this predator can handle.
They are all over the mustard greens now, also all over the bottoms of the
plastic storm windows, which must be nice and warm.  I will put the plants
outside again in late March and not try indoor gardening again without doing
some reading first.  Or maybe see if putting them out at 25 kills bugs.

Potted mustard greens can survive extreme drought and grow back.

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