Pale soil and white, lice-like bugs

I have been having a few problems with my plants as of late.

Firstly, the soil of my indoor plants has taken on a paler, cloudier hue. Secondly, the tips of the leaves for my green bean plants have curled a bit. Lastly, I have these bugs in my pots that have been quite bothersome. I have pictures below, and for the bug problem, I have put up a video (the picture option wasn't working too well from my phone), so maybe someone, somewhere out there can identify them for me.  I also have bugs that look like them, but are red in colour.

Pictures:

Video:



(Skip over to 0:48 in the video)

Brilliant tendergreen bean foliage and more

My plants appear to be doing really well, at least indoors. Check it out!

Picture 1: the brilliant colour on my green beans is fabulous! I cannot wait to eat beans from this.
Picture 2: green onion plant. Hope I can actually get something from this.
Picture 3: black-seeded simpson lettuce plant. It's not growing so fast, but progress is obvious.
Picture 4: tomato plants. Hopefully I can really get these going.
Pictures 5 & 6: parsley. One's been chewed on a bit. I really need to find a way to deal with this. I tried holding up leaves with a used post-it flag on one of them, but I'm going to use a garlic spray and see if that works better.

I am also working on these plants for the front veggie patch: parsley, green onions, lettuce, and kale. Lots of green.

Why kale died when put outside

So, I found out why my kale died once I took it from inside to outside... I didn't "wean" or "harden off" the plant to the outdoors like I should have. Well, now I at least know what happened. Does it also work the other way around, i.e. taking the plant from outdoors to indoors?

Lessons learned

Plants are all doing well except for kale and parsley and especially green beans. I tried planting the kales outside, but well, they just died. Admittedly, the gloves I was using were way too rough. I'm learning a lot! It was also my fault because I let the kale crowd quite a bit. I'm going to fix that mistake! Also, apparently the weed problem can be fixed by laying carpet over the weeds for like a week. It explains why areas where stuff's on top of where weeds are has significantly less of that problem. I can reasonably do this, so why not?

Does anyone know the best way to adapt a plant from indoors to outdoors?

Always remember, I love advice!

- Flora

Kale progress and a question about weed removal

The kale grew really fast! Just look at it in comparison to the last kale post. Yes! By the way, I didn't really commit to the urine weed removal thing. Anyone know of any good organic techniques to quickly remove weeds, without the hassle of pulling them out one at a time? I want to grow the kale in my yard.

Kale has sprouted!

Yay! Let's hope I get a lot out of this. Don't want the mites to get to them. I put in a lot of seeds (curly Scot kale allows for this) so I think things will be fine.

Unusual event

A parsley seedling sprouted in two days. The packet says it's supposed to be 10-20. Unfortunately, that new one got chewed on by pests, as you can see in picture 1. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to cut the leaf off because of the damned pests.
Picture 2: this one is going strong!
Pictures 3 & 5: had to trim these because of dying parts due to pests and one unknown cause.
Picture 4: what kind of bug is this? What's the best way to deal with it? This has been the only thing messing with my plants.

My other plants have yet to sprout. Will tell when they do, with pictures!