by James Alexander-Sinclair
I thought I'd venture, briefly and very amateurishly, into Pippa's territory to see what pests are doing their best to blight my garden.
My garden - like yours - is looking fantastic at the moment. Plants that were just poking from cold ground a couple of months ago are now enormous and luxuriant. Bees buzz, roses overflow and lawns are lush.
Rather than just brag, I thought I'd venture, briefly and very amateurishly, into Pippa's territory to see what pests are doing their best to blight my garden. I'm not brilliant at such things, and quake inside when people bear down on me, clutching festering leaves in polythene bags. A very charming lady asked me a question about some scabby broad beans at Gardeners' World Live and I had to admit that I hadn't a clue; she gave me a very dirty look.
In an attempt to improve my knowledge, I've been scuttling around my borders looking for critters. The first is relatively straightforward: the mullein moth caterpillar. These are stripy chaps that start quite skinny, but rapidly become as fat as witchity grubs by eating verbascum leaves at a terrifying rate. I grow the gorgeous Verbascum bombyciferum, which has gloriously felted leaves and pale yellow flowers with jam-coloured centres. This species doesn't seem to suffer as much as some others, but I always keep an eye out and pick the caterpillars off whenever I see them. I found one on the kitchen ceiling yesterday, which was a bit of a surprise.
My second bug is an unsightly outbreak of blackfly on my cardoon. Looks ugly, but the plant is so very large and healthy that I don't think it's suffering much. I tend to rub blackfly off with my thumb whenever I pass.
Number three on the Blackpitts bug list is a new one to me. I have noticed that lots of my daylily buds were looking skanky and deformed. I broke one open and it was completely rotten and crawling with tiny grubs. These are the foul offspring of the hemerocallis gall midge. So, very sadly, I had to remove all the infected buds from my daylilies, to try and break the cycle. I've got a couple of good flowers on H. 'Bela Lugosi', but not a sausage on H. 'Stafford'.
That is probably enough pests for one blog; if we start on lily beetles or capsid bugs then I'll only get depressed.
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