Garden Pests and Garden Pals

What is a garden pest and what is a garden pal? Sometimes it is easy to tell the difference, other times we wonder whether we should take action and if we make the wrong decision are we doing more harm than good.

We hear about how man has unbalanced the earth's ecosystem by trying to tame nature. A garden is like a miniature earth, the creatures within it determine what thrives, survives, deteriorates or dies. We gardeners have to take care that we do nothing that may affect the balance the garden's pests and garden's pals.

Gardeners who have the space to do so should grow as wide a range of plants as possible to attract both beneficial predators and the undesirable pests on which they live.

Identifying garden pests can be a problem for the novice gardener and here are a few of the common garden pests and natures own garden pest controls.

Vine weevil

I bet you thought I would start with slugs and snails. It was a close thing but nowadays I find this little horror my number one enemy, mainly because by the time you notice something is wrong it is too late. The roots of your plants have all been eaten and it is only at the last minute the plant collapses. Knock the plant out of its pot, break up the compost and there you will find the small white grubs or you may see them on the change to adult. If your friendly robin or blackbird is on hand they will be gulped down; if not deal with them as you wish!

You can buy compost that is specially prepared to resist vine weevil but after a few weeks you need to take other action. The best way of attacking them is to stock up on nematodes (tiny parasitic worms) which prey on vine weevil which you can buy from your local garden centre or mail order suppliers.

Slugs and Snails

Avoid using slug pellets as these harm the frogs, birds and hedgehogs that are natural slug and snail predators.

The song thrush and close relative the blackbird consumes vast quantities of garden snails and slugs, as demonstrated to me this year by my old friend Speckles, and robins eat the eggs.

The Black Ground Beetles eat both slug eggs and the adults. They prefer damp shady areas and often you will find them when you lift a large stone. Whenever possible leave logs and stones undisturbed, we want to keep them in residence.

Provide a good environment for hedgehogs in your garden. Wander out in the dark and you will hear them snuffling about and then the crunch - enough said!

Centipedes also eat slugs but if you see a multi legged creature can you be sure whether it is pest or pal. A rough guide is whether or not it moves quickly. If it moves quickly it is likely to be a predator and therefore a gardener's friend. However, slow moving and it is probably a plant eater and a nuisance in the garden.

Frogs will also help to keep down your slug population. I have a water feature but no pond but that does not stop frogs and toads from living in the garden in summer. It has been my policy for many years to plant very closely so that no soil is on view. That together with small rocks in convenient cool and damp spots gives them an environment where they feel safe and comfortable.

Ducks and hens will do a great job of rooting out your slug population. The problem is ducks leave little reminders of where they have been and hens peck at anything that looks like food.

Aphids Such as Greenfly

Ladybirds are great friends of the gardener. Both adult and larvae feed on pests such as aphids, thrips, mealy bugs and mites. An adult ladybird can consume 5000 aphid during its life.

As with ladybirds, lacewings adults and larvae eat aphids, mites, leafhoppers and scale insects.

The adult hoverfly with its black and yellow stripes looks very much like a small wasp but is harmless to us and should be encouraged into the garden. The maggot-like larva munches aphids by the dozen before emerging as an adult.

Wasps have a bad name being a nuisance when we are trying to have a meal in the garden or a picnic and at the end of summer when they become "dozy". However the grubs of the wasp are fed almost entirely on caterpillars and other insects. By the end of the summer a nest may have consumed up to 250,000 insects. I have watched a wasp attacking and stinging to death what looked like a small worm but was probably a tiny caterpillar.

Birds are another great friend of the gardener. Like everything else there are exceptions, take the pigeon for example - you can take mine anytime you like. I put nest boxes up to encourage blue and great tits. At the beginning of the season you have to be brave as the population of greenfly seems to explode on your roses. Then the first chicks hatch and you see the parent birds hanging onto the rose tops and picking off loads of aphids.

Bats

Folklore has given bats bad press but they are friends of the gardener and for me there is no finer site than when I am sitting out in the twilight of a summer evening watching them swoop and swerve over the garden. These very clever fliers can eat up to 3500 insects a night.

Woodlice

Woodlice are not the most pleasant looking insect and many think they cause damage to plants, especially as they and their young are seen scurrying away when you lift a plant pot. However woodlice have soft mouth parts that will not penetrate healthy plant tissue and feed on decaying matter which helps to retain nutrients in the soil. Resist the temptation to destroy them.

Cabbage White Butterfly

What a pest. If you cover your brassicas with fine net they cannot lay their eggs. If you have not covered you will see the eggs underneath the leaves and they should be removed when spotted. Miss that stage and the caterpillars emerge you need to remove them by hand as soon as possible otherwise they will remove your greens in double quick time.

Ants

Ants are both pests and pals. They eat small insect pests and have a part to play in the recycling of plant and animal wastes in the ground and in compost heaps.

Ants make nests which can undermine both garden and greenhouse plants, causing them to wilt or die.

Some species build mounds on lawns and this can make mowing difficult and spoil the lawn's appearance. I have battled ants in the lawn for years. The problem is that the front lawn is very sandy which makes it easy for them to burrow nests. Nothing gets rid of them permanently and trying to treat them seems to end up with an unsightly lawn. Now I tend to leave them alone and if the lawn is mown regularly there does not seem to be a problem with their mounds.

The biggest problem is when both starlings and occasionally blackbirds purposely sit on top of the nests to purposely upset the ants. The ants swarm up and squirt formic acid onto the birds which apparently cleans the fathers and kills off mites. Unfortunately the ants do not only squirt the bird it hits a patch of grass around the nest turning it brown.

The other problem I have encountered is ants biting through the back of pansies to reach the forming seeds and suffering a few bites when unwittingly putting a hand fork into garden border nests.

Frogs will eat their share of ants and this year I have notices blackbirds taking some to their young.

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