clean plants. Containers that have had these mite-infested plants should 

 be washed carefully and any stakes that have been used on the plants 

 should be burned. Figs. 9B and C show cyclamen mite injury on Afri- 

 can violet and begonia respectively. 



Soil Insects and Lower Animals 



These may be various, including sow bugs, slugs, millepec. . rth- 

 worms. and others. Some of these insects and animals cause trouble to 

 plants bv eating on the roots or leaves and some of them, such as earth- 

 worms, mav injure the physical condition of the soil by their com- 

 workine. 



Fig. 9c — Cyclamen mites cause deformation of 

 new growths on begonia 



The most satisfactory method of controlling these pests is to bake 

 the soil before using it to pot plants. Soil baked in an oven from 1S2 : to 

 200 c F long enough to cook a large-sized potato will greatly reduce the 

 animal life present. In baking the soil it is best to spread it out in ; 

 in depths or one inch or slightly more. 



EXPERIMENTS WITH HOUSE PLANTS 



African Violet 

 Samtpautia ketvens 



Twenty-six African violet plants of the variety Blue Boy were 

 grown for three to 18 months by as many cooperating house w. . 

 As these plants were returned they were classified as follows: four ex- 

 cellent, six very good, rive good, seven fair, and four failures. 



One of the failures was due to insects, two to insufficient water, 

 one to a combination of lack of light and a high night temperature of 

 "2 : - 75° F. 



So/7 used 



A mixture of two parts of good compost soil and one part leaf mold 

 was mixed with enough sand to make the mixture gritty". 



Fifu . 



