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!

Pest attack!

My seedlings grew very quickly (each hour, a new visible length was apparent) but some tiny white bugs appeared to have been feeding on a couple, so I had to cut off the dead parts. It's really cool seeing so much happening within the span of a day. :-)

Growing five more plants!

I have metal buckets and a planter filled with these five other plants: green beans, green onions, kale, cherry tomatoes, and lettuce. Can't wait til these babies really get going!

Two new parsley seedlings sprouted!

Two more seedlings have sprouted! I'm pretty happy about that.

Good news about parsley plant and growing plans

A new seedling has sprouted! Hooray! This particular variety is of the curly kind. Now I feel comfortable to focus on other plants while I manage this one. Next up, cherry tomatoes! The idea is that I'm trying to grow plants by priority of which will save me the most money.

Edit: I just realized... That seedling sprouted to a very visible length in about a day! Maybe it's on sterols...

... That was such a nerdy joke.

Parsley plant post #2

Parsley plant

This particular parsley plant has been around for months. Due to my putting a rotted food piece on the soil (to see if I could be rid of such things that way, rather than under), some white mould formed at the top of the soil, but not on this particular plant. At some point, I took the roots, layered the soil up to cover the mould, and then put them back in. I think its dying may possibly be due to that, or it may be a known natural death that parsley goes through. I planted some seedlings about a week ago for more parsley. Is this something that can grow indoors year-round?

Any help is appreciated.

Obligatory introductory post

Hello!

First off, thank-you for visiting my blog. You may or may not be the first person to do so. If you are, congratulations! You win absolutely nothing!

Now, on to some serious business. I would like to clearly state that the purpose of this blog is entirely selfish: it is about my experiences in the seemingly simple, folksy world of farming. What it may naturally expand to in the future from growing edible plants, and, perhaps livestock, would naturally be the following: creating "mini ecosystems" (i.e., creating a place where birds , butterflies, and other such desirable creatures can live happily) and decorative gardening and/or agriculture.

This is how everything will work: I will post pictures of various plants, areas, etc, that I'm working on, with comments. This is partly to track my own progress, since it's cheaper and more convenient for me to do it in a blog format due to my having an awesome smartphone. The other part is that I can hopefully get great advice and ideas from the agricultural community or experienced gardeners. In return, I will try to be as active as possible on your blogs/forums/websites/etc. I can't guarantee exactly what I'll comment on, but I will, at the very least, follow your site if I can. That is a guarantee!

Regards,

Flora

PS: For those of you who don't know me, yes, my name really is Flora. And I'm aware of the Flora and Fauna jokes.