2021 has ended, and how I wanted to just sleep the whole day and do nothing....

But I know I have been procrastinating to look into my terrarium box that has been neglected due to long hours of work and at the same time I was taking care of my mom and settling house chores first.

I know that the salad garden is becoming too disarray and it really time to have a proper trim

Moreover there could be some mealybugs sipping in looking at the salad looks "very healthy"

And my worry became my nightmare!

True enough when I started harvesting, I already spotted some "cottons" around that is usually the signs of mealybug nests...

And it is even more horror when I see most of the healthy big leaves were already laced with mealybug eggs all over!

I thought the worse was over when I had a thorough clean up before.... unfortunately they returned with vengeance!

And the more I checked, the more horror I see! You can actually see mealy bugs staring to hatch from the cotton nests, and they actually move, jut very slowly... and when I was moving the salad stems around, they just stopped and "play dead"

YES... Insects are smart too!

I had no choice but to start with Collateral Damage

Starting with throwing away those stems were all laced with either baby bugs / eggs... It was so heart breaking because those plants looked healthy but they were all entirely infected. Moreover I had to immediately spray with water based aerosol to kill the bugs before the adults jumps out.

Yes.... they can jump!

Imagine that they suddenly jump onto your body , or your hair!

Further more horrifying is that when I started spotting the bugs have infested the soil.... all the small dots are the eggs as well as seeing some of the baby mealy bugs moving around.

I had to do the unthinkable; just like when we take anti-biotics the medication actually eliminate all the good and bad bacteria, so did it happened when I poured the "infected soil" into boiling hot water, in the process I also accidentally killed a tiny earthworm along the way.

It was really heart breaking, but the soil is actually good soil specially brewed for the terrarium box, and the last time I "killed a soil like a nuclear bomb of a whole pot of boiling hot water", I managed to let the soil rest and revived with the good microbes later on.

So sorry earthworm! Please forgive me!

Thankfully, I didn't have to use that method on the entire box! Or else I would have to let it rest a whole week after every "good inhabitant" were practically genocide, which is literally killing the soil itself too.

However, I did have to clean up every single stalk of salad, double and triple checking which are good to wash, keep and replant; while the bad ones in to the bag and sprayed with poisonous aerosol.

All in all after almost 6 hours of checking and tending and letting the cuts nourished with water (before replanting) a whole new bed of salad is ready!

Hopefully they will be given a chance to grow, and I will need to look for a proper new box to transplant them over later / get the same size and just use the cover because the cover was broken and it was exposed to attack a lot more.

All was not lost though...

At least I got a really good box of fresh greens that are still edible for either cooking or salad...

And me and my family had a yummy treat with fresh harvested greens as part of a home made soupy prawn-based soup with Sarawak instant noodles (which is very very different from usual ramen)