bugs & beasties

Early this year I noticed blackfly feasting on my lovely Cardoons... I thought about spraying with an organic spray (after the bees have gone to bed of course!) and then noticed that among the blackfly there were some ladybird larvae and realised the spray would kill them too. So I decided on a 'rebranding' exercise: I'd see if I could look at this as a 'ladybird breeding programme' rather than a 'blackfly problem', and leave them alone to see what would happen. The Cardoons are in an area that's been organically gardened for at least 3 years and has really diverse planting that attracts loads of different insects so I crossed my fingers & hoped that pests and predators would find a balance. Over the next few weeks I watched and sure enough the numbers of ladybirds, eggs and larvae gradually increased, and the blackfly decreased until the Cardoons were completely clean. Amazing! You think they'll never be able to get the better of them but little by little they take over. The long term benefit was that now I had a really thriving population of ladybirds ready to tackle any other aphid attack elsewhere in the garden - if I'd zapped the blackfly at first sight, this wouldn't have happened.It's made me have a hard think about so-called organic sprays - OK, they may not be harmful for the environment, but overuse prevents the natural biodiversity in a garden from developing as it should, and then pest problems can really get out of hand! Bugs are the building blocks of complex and healthy networks of wildlife: knock these out and the layers on top which depend on them, will struggle. OK, I'm not suggesting we all let blackfly slaughter your broad beans (tried that, didn't work!) but on vigorous plants, it may be worth having a little more faith in nature's ability to sort things out by herself. And it's all fascinating to watch :o)

"Plus it doesn't matter if we all know plants are better value. I'd make the point of this to the customer but if they want trough grown at the extra cost that's their choice I'd just do it"

"I've done 5ft Thorne troughs. Very easy to plant just got a mini digger dug the trench then drop them in couldn't be easier however £250 per m does seem expensive. "

Thought I'd sign up to this forum. And I hope I'm allowed to post stuff for sale on here as this will be a one off? I have for sale a tiny pro robot, it's not the new edition but it's the bigger one of the two. If anyone is interested then please…

Comments

PRO

Lara Hurley August 16, 2010 at 9:36pm

I have a 'live and let live' policy too. Leave lots of seed heads and stems over the winter so that the population remains strong for next year or buy a few bug boxes if you don't have any already. Hover flies are also brilliant - they have larvae that eat aphids too.