Bug Wars

Look out, look out – the bugs are about!

The weather is perfect for growing at the moment, but it’s also good for pests and diseases. In particular, the bugs seem to have been going through population explosions recently.

In or garden, we’ve noticed a lot of vine weevil activity recently, with several adults actually walking around, especially at dusk. This, combined with the ‘notches’ chewed out of the leaf margins, is a warning of things to come. The adult female vine weevils feed on the leaves of plants before laying their eggs in the compost or soil at the base of the plants concerned. When these eggs hatch, it’s the grubs that do the real damage by feeding on plant roots.

Treat plants growing in containers with

-          Bug Clear Ultra Vine Weevil Killer from Scotts or

-          Provado Vine Weevil Killer from Bayer

These can give control for several months. If the plants are growing in the garden soil, try using Just Vine Weevil Killer from Just Green, a biological control that uses microscopic eelworms to find the pests and infect them with bacteria that kills them.

 

Aphids are not far behind in numbers; we have some roses that are supporting quite large colonies in the shoot tips, and if we don’t sort them out soon with a spray, they will start to become a real problem.

A carry-over from last year has been the amount of Cypress aphids on conifers (even the dreaded Leylandii). The damage shows as brown patches of dead growth (which were last year’s feeding sites) and if you have any of these in your conifer hedge, you may want to consider spraying with Bug Clear Ultra for flowering plants (Scotts) or All-in-One garden pest killer (Doff). The signs to look for before you spray are sticky foliage, which is coated with ‘honeydew’, and mottling on the growing tips, as these are indicators that the insects are present and actively feeding.

 

With the warmth and rain, fungus infections are on the increase, so keep a careful watch for blight on potatoes and tomatoes. Peach leaf curl is showing now on members of the cherry family. The curled, discoloured leaves will turn brown and drop off the trees, so make sure you rake them up and burn them or bin them. There is little point in spraying until the autumn and the plant will produce a second flush of leaves anyway.

 

As yet, there are no biological controls for fungal diseases available to gardeners (even though they are available in increasing numbers for controlling pests), but within the next few years this could all change.

 

The search for alternative pesticides is throwing up some interesting (and unlikely) controls at the moment, with reports of diluted skimmed milk being used to control powdery mildew on courgettes and other members of the cucumber family.

Lots of people are starting to spread coffee grounds on the garden in an attempt to deter slugs and if you ask at a local café, they may be only too happy to give you some for free. 

If you have any unusual pest and disease controls you like to use, perhaps you would like to let us know on; Steve.Bradley@the-sun.co.uk. Also, if you want to know more about some of the controls we have mentioned, just try these links to see what is available. www.just-green.com/sunslug and www.just-green.com/sunant

 

Enjoy your garden

 

Steve

Change with the weather

Change with the weather

At last some sunshine! It seems that all we have had is rain since the Chelsea Flower Show ended. Although we had a relatively dry spring, the weather seems determined to catch-up and provide a month’s rain in just a few days, which presents another set of problems for gardeners. We had just managed to get our herbaceous perennials staked before all the torrential rain arrived, so the damage has not been too bad, but travelling around I have spotted some very flat and battered perennials, with Paeonies suffering the most (especially those where the flowers had opened and filled up with rain water).

 

Some of the main pest problems we are seeing at the moment are slugs munching away at everything they can slither onto (which is very easy at the moment due to the very wet soil) and slug eggs hatching like mad in these warm damp conditions, so get some slug pellets down or use one of the organic slug killers, like Just Slug Killer (the nematodes work very well now the soil is warmer).

The other major problem we have had this week is ants. They seem to be more active than they were at this time last year, but then the soil is warmer due to the drier spring. If you spot ants running up and down the stems of your plants, take a close look at the new leaves and young shoot tips and you will almost certainly find greenfly feeding there. If you spray them now, it stops the greenfly populations building up to epidemic proportions.

 

The conditions are perfect for really good growth on most of your plants, with all the warmth and humidity, but remember that these are perfect conditions for potato blight to start. Rather than wait until you see the first symptoms, you can spray with a suitable fungicide like Dithane 945, this fungicides (like the few others still available) work better when they are protecting plants from disease, rather than trying to eradicate it after it strikes.

Our first strawberries are just starting to turn red – the first few have been picked and there are more on the way. With all the rain, we’ve been picking them when they are pink and letting them ripen on a windowsill. If they are left to get wet, they can get botrytis and the fungal mould will cover them within 24 hours.