African Violets and Gesneriads: tips, trick, and chatter on keeping pests out, 1 by Keyring

Keyring wrote:
We've had a lot of discussion about pest treatment, identification, and isolation of plants. All of these assume that you already have the plants (with the pests). So.... I thought it might be good to chat about what else you can do minimize your exposure.

What am I talking about? Mostly about what you buy, how you buy, and how you bring it into the house.

I don't intend for this to be a soap box post, but I can already feel that it's going to be a long-ish one. So apologies in advance for that, and here we go......

Let's face it. We don't grow in a vacuum and we like to get new plants. The more plants we get, the higher the risk of getting new pests and viruses. And the more plants we have, and the smaller/more cramped our growing/propagating space, the higher the risk that a pest outbreak can take out our entire collection.

As we're discussed before, there are pests and such everywhere (like your yard). Sure, it's worse in some climates than others, but they're there. Most growers would agree that it's pest CONTROL, not pest ELIMINATION, that we aim for. So we develop methods for isolation, monitoring and treatment (mild preventatives as well, if we're good)....

But all this treatment gets really annoying/painful/expensive/unhealthy. This is where we should stop for a moment and think about what we buy and how we bring plants in.

[the photo is a cherry blossom that was in bloom in DC about a week ago.]