I had a veritable jungle going on in my bedroom till earlier this evening, when I noticed mealy bugs on several of my babies and had a rather paranoid culling session, as it's going to be 3 weeks before I can get predator insects delivered.

So far the casualties have been my big ass bushy monster of a monstera, my rubber plant, a couple of spider plants, most of my trailing pothos vines, the wandering dude, and a little baby of a dracenea. I haven't gone through my succulents yet, but I'm not hopeful. At least the succs propagate easily though.

What's survived of my main plants so far, are a couple of dubious tbh spider plants, my freshly rooted monstera cutting, an asparagus fern, 1/3 of my pothos, and my two string of hearts pots.

The 50 or so different succulents that I haven't checked over yet. : (

Really hoping it stays warmish in the uk for the next few months as I'm going to go bankrupt running the heating to keep the predator bugs alive while they eat up the rest of the mealybug infestation otherwise. It's going to be so much fun living in a bedsit with those guys running around, lmao.

That's a bummer about the pests. I hope the helper bugs can get things in check.

I once had a windowsill herb garden going. Mint, rosemary, and chives I got to harvest. The rest were taken out by aphids before I could get to taste any of them.

Now all I've got going is a tiny cactus. I named it Sherman. :3

I wouldn't call myself a collector but I do enjoy me some houseplants. Also is it odd that the more casual plant havers seem to have less plant issues? I have all kinds of pothos all over, a zz plant, a very precious christmas cactus (which I keep forgetting to fertilize is it too late in the summer now?), a massive beast of a succulent that was a tiny thing from CVS and took over the LARGE pot it was in with other cactuses (everyone is now separated), a philodendron and some snake plants. That's all I can remember atm. Worst I've had was just some fungus gnats in my house and I just space out my watering a bit more. Really I only water when I remember or if I notice a vague change in appearance of my leafy plants. Cactuses get a periodic deep soak and my air plant gets a weekly or every other week soak given its in the bathroom and gets a good periodic steaming.

If I could only have one plant tho I'll defend the christmas cactus til the end because it came from a cutting my dad nicked from the dialysis office when he was really sick. Its like a little living piece of him now since my old one from my childhood neighbors (grandparents, not actually but they were to me) ended up kicking the bucket when we needed someone to watch them for us when we moved and yeah... no one I don't trust would watch this one for me Id take it with me if I had to.