Help with plastic plants/live plants question?

[corkyness]

So I'm in the process of making this giant jungle gym for my african grey, and I want to incorporate plants into the design in different ways. I want to use live plants and figure they will be a lot more fun for my parrot to play with, but problem is I live in a pretty small town and there's only two places that sell a good selection of nontoxic plants okayed for parrots...but both places can't assure me that the plants are free of pesticides and don't have any specific pesticide free plants. I'm not a plant person at all, so I'm sorry if this first question sounds really stupid lol but plants sprayed with pesticides, can you wash them like you wash fruit to make them safe, or it doesn't work that way? I'm not sure where else to go to get pesticide free plants or tree branches.

Second question is plastic plants. Are these safe for a parrot to climb on and shred? Are some safer then others?

 

[chris-md]

Hi corkyness,

I was a horticulturist in a former life. It's safe to assume pretty much any commercially grown plants will have been treated with pesticides. What they were likely treated with is systemic, so it's actually inside the plant. The good news is that after a certain amount of time it gets expelled from the plant. This is why the pesticide directions might say reapply once every week or so.

If you want to be super safe, get some plants you want and keep them isolated away from the bird for about a month. Most of the commonly used pesticides will be out of the plants system by that time. But wipe the leaves thoroughly. Some types of pesticides do stay on the leaves. A few cleanings will take care of these.

Sorry, I can't speak to the safety of artificial plants in this case.