These past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing my plants for winter and planting flowers for winter.

The first thing I do in winter is bring the orchids inside. They live on an enclosed porch in the spring, summer, and fall. But as soon as temperatures started getting into the 30s at night, I brought in the orchids. Our kitchen table? Looks like a jungle. I’m trying to figure out where to put them all so they get enough sun. The terrarium for my smallest orchids moved next to the TV.

Also next to the TV? Paper whites! They’re very young and I’m keeping them in shade one more week while they grow some roots. There’s also two Amaryllis bulbs growing. As soon as the Amaryllis bloom, I’ll move them by the TV. They should start blooming around the middle of December.

I love winter flowers. I just need to stop buying orchids, because holy moly. Orchid invasion. (I rescue the on sale orchids from the grocery store)

And then, nematodes. One of the more annoying things that we found about living in CO are fungus gnats. The fungus gnat settle in houseplants, reproduces, and then there are gnats everywhere. It is really annoying. I lost a lot of houseplants last winter. The gnat larvae eat the plant roots and the plants won’t grow. I am hesitant to use pesticide. I want to stop the gnat life cycle, not just kill adult gnats. So I looked for some more mother-nature solutions for the fungus gnat infestation that allowed me to keep my indoor plants. I learned about beneficial nematodes. Many species of nematodes also eat plants. But there are some beneficial specifics which eat insect larvae. They can be used to control outdoor and indoor garden pests–including fleas! One week after applying nematodes, our gnat infestation were almost gone. So this year, I ordered nematodes anticipating a repeat. And while waiting for my nematodes, lo and behold, there is a healthy colony of fungus gnats in one of my houseplants. I’ve been applying gnats to all my houseplants. Hoping for the best there!