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)

I would love to hear if anyone has had an experience of paving being pushed up because of the hot and dry weather this summer. We have had a number of patios where this has become a problem (a couple we laid ourselves and quite a few more where…

"Others have ID ed it.
I chop them off at ground level with secutears then spray a drop or two of Praxys on the wound... if it doesnt killt he first time, it will the 2nd or 3rd"

At the Portugal Invitational, Kress showed turf professionals that unmanned mowing has moved from emerging concept to practical course-management solutionChampionship golf leaves no room for compromise. That's precisely why Kress chose the inaugural…

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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.