It’s easy to keep indoor plants free from unwanted visitors – put new arrivals into quarantine
Time for a controversial opinion… While indoor gardening is often considered second fiddle to its outdoor cousin, I think it is superior in pretty much every way. First, it is far more democratic. The vast majority of people have access to a sunny windowsill, but those with substantial outdoor space (and the resources needed to landscape this) are significantly more limited. Secondly, for those living in less idyllic climes, it means you keep growing all year round, even at 10 o’clock on a stormy February evening. It even comes far less encumbered with dusty, cultural baggage of not only the “right” way to do things, but even the “right” way to think about them – including the idea that indoor horticulture is not “real” gardening.
However, there is one aspect of gardening in the great indoors which can put it at an enormous disadvantage: pest and disease control. Perhaps counterintuitively, although living rooms and conservatories provide in many ways a sealed sanctuary, protected from external threats, these very same conditions mean that if a pest hitches a ride on new plant purchases they can quickly reach plague-like proportions. In a stable, warm, indoor climate with an ample food source and no predators, populations of mealy bug, scale insect, red spider mite and thrips can explode, and quickly cripple the health of many plants. This has been made especially likely in recent years as most of the big houseplant growers in the Netherlands, who supply the vast majority of the market, have done a really commendable job improving their environmental footprint by slashing the amount of pesticides they use to essentially zero. When once plants arrived pretty much sterile to store, they now often come with a hitch hiker or two. Sometimes doing the right thing can have its downsides!
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