Will Cinnamon Hurt Houseplants

Numerous everyday items can also be used on your houseplants. Examples include vinegar, egg shells, and banana peels. What about cinnamon, though?

Can cinnamon harm indoor plants? Cinnamon won’t harm indoor plants. In reality, there are a number of methods to use cinnamon to maintain the health and happiness of your houseplants.

Cinnamon can be used to get rid of fungus, manage pests, and fix broken stems. Here are the specifics on the various applications for cinnamon with indoor plants.

Rooting Agent

You can quit spending money right away if you’ve been buying stuff like hormone rooting powder. Cinnamon saves the day.

Many gardeners claim that applying cinnamon on the stem of a plant before planting the cutting will still be effective. You just need to use it once to encourage root formation in nearly every type of plant you grow in this way.

Put some cinnamon on a paper towel with a teaspoon on it to use it as a rooting agent. The stem ends should be dampened before rolling in the paper towel. Put potting dirt in the cuttings’ pots. The cinnamon will promote new growth and play another important purpose, which I’ll discuss next.

Prevent Damping Off Disease

Cinnamon can help stop damping off disease when applied to a plant cutting. This annoying illness is caused by a fungus that strikes young seedlings just as they begin to grow. Before the fungus can begin attacking your seedlings, which are delicate, cinnamon eliminates it.

Additionally, it works well to both prevent and treat various fungi-related illnesses. For instance, it can assist in the removal of slime mold. You can add a teaspoon or two of cinnamon to the water and let it steep for the entire night to use it as a fungicide on older plants.

Put it in a spray bottle after passing it through a coffee filter or piece of cheesecloth. Spray the afflicted plant’s leaves, stems, or any affected areas. If fungi from the soil are a problem, you can also spray the soil.

Ant Removal

Many common garden pests can be effectively eliminated and prevented with cinnamon. Ants are among the most important.

Ants are a typical garden pest that can be found around houseplants as well as in greenhouses and garden plots. Cinnamon creates a barrier that insects don’t like to cross, helping to keep ants and other small pests away. All you have to do to utilize cinnamon is sprinkle a little bit of it in issue areas where ants are a problem.

Cinnamon may be used inside and outdoors of your home. Finding the ants’ entrance point and then scattering cinnamon along the path is the most efficient approach to apply it indoors. Although it won’t kill the ants, it will keep them outside.

Deters Mushrooms

Mushrooms are fantastic, but only if you can get them to grow precisely where you want them to (typically in your yard!). You may assist prevent mushroom growth without having to worry about harming your plants by incorporating cinnamon into your garden mulch.

Prevents Rust

Another fungus that commonly affects garden plants, including calendula, is rust. The fungus Puccinia distincta’s spores are responsible for spreading this soil-borne illness. Rust is annoying since it frequently impacts the entire plant, including the blooms.

You cannot utilize calendula or related plants (such as daisies or cineraria) after the flowers have been infected by rust if you are growing them for medical purposes.

So it’s crucial that you understand how to get rid of and avoid rust in your garden. Crop rotation and other excellent gardening hygiene practices can be helpful, but once rust has started to grow, getting rid of it can be difficult. Cinnamon is useful.

When you plant, all you have to do is add a little cinnamon to the soil. This alone can frequently prevent rust from taking over the garden. Cinnamon works best as a potent antifungal agent in conjunction with other wise measures, such as evenly spacing your plants and maintaining good watering hygiene.

Heals Plant Wounds

The significance of trimming your plants is probably something you already know. However, excessive pruning can be problematic because it makes it more difficult for your plants to recover and produce new growth. When you use filthy instruments to trim plants and spread illnesses from plant to plant, you run into another frequent issue.

Sometimes, even without meaning to, you might unintentionally hit a plant with the pruning shears or weed whacker. This can result in a wide range of issues, but thankfully cinnamon can assist. Applying cinnamon to a fresh plant wound helps promote healing and stop fungal infections from growing or getting worse.

Deters Furry Pests

You might have to think about adding some cinnamon if furry pests like mice, rabbits, squirrels, and other rodents are a problem in your garden. As you are surely aware, cinnamon has a very potent aroma. Animals that run low to the ground are frequently confused by its strong-smelling oils, leading them to completely avoid a region.

A tablespoon of cinnamon placed around the border of your garden can be the answer if you discover that these pests are persistently bothering it.

Prevents Mosquitoes

The most unpleasant organisms on earth are certainly mosquitoes, especially during the hottest parts of the summer. Applying a little cinnamon around the garden will get rid of them. It’s not the most efficient insect repellent available (citronella still gets my choice), but when combined with other substances, it can be useful.

Can Even Be Used on Houseplants

A little cinnamon can be beneficial for plants that are grown inside. The best places to utilize cinnamon to control common pests like spider mites, whiteflies, and others are greenhouses. Cinnamon can simply be sprinkled on top of the soil around your plants. This treatment is also effective on indoor houseplants.

What additional application for houseplants may cinnamon have? Gnats, which aren’t inherently dangerous to plants but might be annoying to you as an indoor gardener, can be eliminated. Mold and mildew on indoor plants can be removed with cinnamon.

My plants: Can cinnamon harm them?

Gardeners seeking to get a jump on the season are plagued by the damping-off illness. Numerous soil fungus, including Pythium, Phytophthora, Rhizoctonia spp., Fusarium spp., Sclerotinia, and Botrytis, are responsible for damping off. It happens in moist, cool environments. When seeds are sown, sprinkle cinnamon on the soil’s surface to guard against the damping-off illness that can damage your plants. An effective anti-fungal is cinnamon. It eliminates soil-borne fungus spores and stops them from infecting your plants. Until plants are strong enough to overcome environmental difficulties, you might need to reapply the cinnamon on a regular basis.

To avoid damping off, start with sterile potting soil. Mold and mildew can also be prevented by watering just from the bottom of the plant and letting the soil surface dry between applications. It’s even okay to sprinkle cinnamon on houseplants.

Can cinnamon be applied on plant leaves?

Numerous scientific research (opens in new tab), which have demonstrated that cinnamon is an efficient fungicide and even encourages healthier growth in some plants, like tomatoes, have demonstrated the benefits of cinnamon on plants. Cinnamon powder-drizzled tomatoes have been found to produce more and healthier leaves. Learning how to grow tomatoes can include using cinnamon, particularly if you’re experiencing issues with them.

The most significant attribute of cinnamon, however, is its anti-fungal ability, which makes it useful for treating a range of plant issues, including mold, root rot, and seedling damping off. It seems that any kind of cinnamon—ground powder, essential oil, or water-based extract—can be dusted, incorporated into the soil, or applied topically to treat fungal infections. What is in dispute, though, is which variety of cinnamon produces the best benefits. This is where things start to get interesting.

Can cinnamon keep insects away from plants?

To keep mosquitoes and other bugs away from your plants, sprinkle some cinnamon around them. Since they don’t like the potent scent of cinnamon, you can relax in your garden in peace (even at night). A teabag can be planted as an alternative.

Does cinnamon attract insects?

Bugs are repelled by cinnamon. According to pest management specialist Natalie Barrett, cinnamon is used as a natural bug repellent because “insects and other pests don’t enjoy the fragrance of cinnamon, nor are they fond of its powdered texture.”

Drying Out Soil

Overwatering plants is a major cause of infestations. Theoretically, you can keep your plant soil dry and inhospitable to gnats by spacing out your watering sessions.

Remove about 2 cm of soil from the plant. As a result, the larvae and eggs are exposed, hastening the soil’s drying process.

Prior to watering once more, let the soil to dry to a depth of about an inch and a half.

It did lessen the amount of larvae squirming around beneath the dirt, but it didn’t totally solve the issue.

Many plants can’t go for lengthy periods of time without water, so if you start watering normally again, the gnats will just start to reproduce once more.

Cider Traps

Apple cider vinegar is the ideal bait in this practical trap since gnats are drawn to it.

The gnats will now try to crawl through the tiny holes in the cling film, but they won’t be able to do so because of the vinegar, and they will drown in it.

The biggest drawback of this approach is that it only eliminates adult gnats, leaving hundreds of larvae and eggs still present in the soil unharmed.

However, it did kill a fair amount of adult gnats, severely reducing the gnat population’s ability to reproduce and lowering the overall population.

Potato Slices

Slices of potato are an inexpensive way to gauge the extent of the infestation and, incidentally, get rid of some larvae because gnat larvae adore raw potatoes.

Pull out the chunks after waiting 4 to 8 hours. The potato will literally be covered in larvae if the infection is severe.

Only dozens of larvae can be eliminated by each potato slice at once. Because adult gnats can lay 200–300 eggs at a time, it would be impossible to eradicate a severe infestation with only potato pieces.

But it’s great for determining the extent of the gnat population and testing the efficacy of your other strategies.

Chamomile Tea & Cinnamon

Strong natural fungicides like chamomile and cinnamon eliminate the principal food source for gnats, rendering the soil uninhabitable.

Boiling water is used to make one liter of strong chamomile tea. Once the tea has cooled, it is combined with four parts water. As normal, water plants with tea mixture.

Spread cinnamon liberally throughout the soil’s surface for a double dose of fungicidal effects.

The gnat numbers were drastically decreased by the chamomile/cinnamon dousing within days, but the surviving population continued to grow over the following few weeks.

Can cinnamon be used with succulents?

An orange, cancer-like growth close to or on the stem is one indication of sickness in succulents. It most likely has a minute mite infection.

The succulent should be placed in a different container until fresh, healthy growth occurs after the contaminated tissue has been removed. After working with diseased succulents, properly clean your instruments to avoid spreading the infection to other plants.

Pockmarks appear on the leaves of aloes, gasterias, and other succulents as a result of another illness, which also seems to have bruised tissue.

The treatment consists of mixing two tablespoons of ground cinnamon into one pint of isopropyl alcohol, shaking it vigorously, letting it sit overnight, straining it through a coffee filter, then spraying it on the plants the following day. You might need to use a systemic disease control, which is available at nurseries and online, if this doesn’t work.

Are fungus gnats deterred by cinnamon?

By sprinkling diluted chamomile tea on the plants, adult fungus gnats can also be killed effectively.

Spread it over the soil’s top to kill the larvae and break the life cycle.

Control Fungus Gnats, Cinnamon A Natural Option

  • Cinnamon powder is a popular and widely accessible natural fungicide that is highly effective in reducing fungus gnats.
  • Cinnamon powder eliminates the fungus that the damping off larvae feed on.
  • Simply sprinkle enough cinnamon powder across the top layer of soil is the only step required to use the cinnamon powder.
  • This antifungal substance is a powerful technique to destroy the fungi that you often find in potting soil and decomposing plant materials.

Bacillus thuringiensis var israelensis

Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis, sometimes known as Bti, is a naturally occurring bacteria that kills a variety of worms, insects, and larvae. See our post on using Mosquito Dunks for fungus gnats for more information on Bti.

The particular strains of Bt, H-14, or israelensis kill fungus gnat larvae successfully.

Does cinnamon put off ants?

Many residences in Las Vegas and Henderson have Argentine and smelly house ants. Nothing is worse than waking up in the morning, heading to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, only to discover that your house has been broken into. The greatest natural ways to try to get rid of the ants infesting your space are listed below.

Mint

Natural bug repellents include peppermint. You can use peppermint essential oil or mint plants to naturally repel ants around your home. Your house will smell minty fresh, which repels ants. Place mint plants on the exterior of your house and near the doors. Use a cotton ball and a few drops of peppermint essential oil to clean any suspected locations. Additionally, you can put cotton balls soaked with peppermint oil in cabinets and other places where ants congregate.

Vinegar

In a spray bottle, combine vinegar and water in a 50/50 solution. To kill the ants, spray it directly on them. After that, remove the dead ants with a damp paper towel and throw them away. Spray vinegar and water around your windowsills, doorways, and other entry points if you observe ants entering your home.

Lemon Juice

Lemon juice appears to degrade ant scent traces in a similar way to vinegar. Try making an all-purpose spray by combining 1 part lemon juice with 3 parts water. Any spots where you find ants should be sprayed with the lemon solution around the home’s perimeter and entryways.

Cinnamon

An excellent alternative for ant control is cinnamon. An ant that consumes cinnamon suffocates and perishes. You can sprinkle ground cinnamon along an anthill opening or on the ants’ journey. Ants can be effectively repelled by using cinnamon essential oil. Spray a solution of water and a few drops of cinnamon oil on ant trails, around windows, doors, and cracks.

Cayenne Pepper or Black Pepper

Cayenne pepper is vile to ants. It will also work just as well with black pepper. Find the ant infestation’s source, scatter some pepper around it, and if you can, build a barrier to prevent the ants from entering your home. A different approach is to combine pepper and water and then spray the resulting mixture at the ants. The pepper won’t actually kill the ants, but it will certainly stop them from coming back.

Food-Grade Diatomaceous Earth

DE, which is diatomaceous earth of food grade, is effective at keeping ants away. The fossilized remains of sea phytoplankton are included in this powder. DE’s razor-sharp tiny edges can pierce through the exoskeletons of ants, gradually causing their bodies to dry up.

  • On windowsills, the area around the refrigerator, under cabinets, under garbage cans, and anywhere else you notice ants, lightly sprinkle a thin layer of DE.
  • Repeat each day until no more ants are present.