Yellow Cosmos

The dianthus bud is still closed but the cosmos are in full bloom. I got the seeds from home in Kerala. There the cosmos plants are six footers, so I was not really sure how it would do here in a pot on my balcony. Well, I planted them in those Al Rawabi 2kg yogurt containers and guess what, they grew to a height of around two feet and then burst into flowers. They love the sun and look great.
But of late we have been having a red colored web-spinning spider like mite attacking them. I read somewhere the best thing to do is to give the plants a shower, which drowns the pests. Well so they are getting showers every two days. But these pests are persistent.
God knows where they came from; my guess is they arrived with the marigold plants I bought from a Jaddaf nursery. Well first they destroyed all the marigold plants and then moved on to the sunflowers and are now attacking the cosmos. All of them being from the same family seems to be the reason. They don’t seem to like the petunia as much, so those plants are being left alone.