The Good the Bad and
the Ugly of the Garden!
I will
start with the Good Guys!
Our
garden has been teaming with beneficial insects over the last few months – they
are also known as the predators because they eat the bugs we don’t want around.
They can also be known as the important pollinators such as bees that are
responsible for fertilisation of our plants to produce fruits and seeds. We
love diversity in our garden and welcome these intriguing visitors.
The first
visitor to our garden was the Blue-banded Bee – this is an Australian Native
Solitary Bee. Solitary because they live and work on their own (alongside other
native bees) as opposed to honey bees that are social bees living in colonies
housing a queen, drones and workers. The photograph below was taken in the All
Hallows Parish Community Garden at the Tulsi Basil plant. These bees are
attracted to blue flowers. You can just see the blue and black stripes on the
bee – a female has four stripes and a male 5 stripes. A special feature of this bee is buzz pollination - rapid movement to release pollen from the anther of a flower. For some plants such as our tomatoes and eggplant buzz pollination is necessary to release pollen and enhance yield - the honeybee is not able to buzz pollinate.
Next
exciting visitor to our garden was the Ladybird larva. This visitor while not
as beautiful as its adult self has a very important role as a predator of
aphids, mites and scale (all things we don’t want to see in our garden. Here is
the story of the Ladybird life cycle to put things in perspective: During the
warmer months lady birds lay small eggs in clusters on the underside of leaves
(they are very clever as all insects are and lay the eggs close to a source of
food for the larva that hatches).
The eggs
will usually be close to a community of aphids that have been attacking our
plants. The larva goes through three stages of growth over 21 days, shedding
its skin at each stage. The larva increase in size over these three stages by
being ferocious eaters of our pests. It then attaches itself to a leaf by its
tail where it changes to pupa.
During
this stage the ladybird starts transforming into an adult. It doesn’t eat
during this stage and stays in one spot huddled in a ball until it is ready to
emerge.
When the
ladybird emerges as an adult it doesn’t have spots until the ladybird shell
dries and hardens. This takes several hours.
Okay now its time to talk about the bad & the ugly!
We all
need to know this; every garden has its share of pest and disease at one time
or another, it is a fact of life. There are many contributing factors – weather
and humidity play a big part in this, continuous planting, overuse of chemical
fertilisers, poor soil quality and lack of diversity in the garden just to name
a few. It’s how you deal with it that matters, we have chosen to maintain an
organic garden – that means we do not use any harmful products containing
chemicals or toxic substances, no chemical/synthetic fertilisers, pesticides,
herbicides or fungicides. So we use natural strategies that take a little more
effort, but in the long run we reap the rewards of contributing to the health
of our ecosystem and planet, including the humans that are a part of it. Recently
our garden has been giving us signs that it is in need of some extra care with
soil regeneration. Two diseases that we have witnessed in the last two weeks
are shown below:
Root Knot
This is
caused by microscopic nematodes (eelworms). The female embeds in plant roots
where eggs are laid into the soil. One female can produce 2000 eggs. On
hatching the larvae force their way into young roots, as they feed they release
a saliva into the root that causes lumps to develop along the roots. The
effected roots are unable to transport nutrients and water to the above ground
plant, causing it to deteriorate and die. Practicing crop rotation helps
prevent this disease. Sweet corn, onions, cauliflowers and cabbages are
tolerant of this disease. Have kept a specimen of part of the affected root
collected at our last working bee. You can see the lumps on the root system and
how deformed the root looks in the image below.
Blossom End Rot
The
symptoms of this disease occur only on the fruit at the blossom end (the
opposite end to the stalk). A distinct characteristic is the brown sunken end.
It affects tomatoes and capsicum. The disease is the result of a lack of
calcium in the soil, being exasperated if the water supply to the plant
fluctuates.
Reference: What Garden Pest or Disease Is That? By Judy
McMaugh
