Today 
RSSGardeners' musings
Slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails
Posted by: James Alexander-Sinclair, 05 February 2008, 11.14AM
Every year the RHS publishes a list of popular pests: popular in that they are the ones about whom the RHS entomologists have had the most enquiries. Top of the charts this year are slugs and snails (everybody's bête noir) followed by the harlequin ladybird. The rest are the usual suspects: vine weevils (No.3 on the list), lily beetles (No.9) etc.
No matter how depressed we may get with cushion scale (No.4=) or the depredations of berberis sawfly (No.7) there is always a silver lining. There are worse pests out there which we, in Britain, will never have to deal with in our gardens.
For example in Trinidad there is a large ant (about 1cm long) called a bachak that will (along with a few hundred friends) quickly demolish a garden. They even eat onions and would almost certainly treat any of our ants (No.4=) as cocktail snacks.
We are unlikely to stumble across the giant Palouse earthworm. Though harmless - and endangered - it can grow to be about a metre long which is enough to give anyone a bit of a shock (sadly, this Palouse earthworm appears to have had a bit of a spade-related accident).
In Australia you are much more likely to stumble across a snake than a rosemary beetle (No.6) while quietly rumbling about in the shrubbery. As Australia is home to the ten most venomous snakes in the world then gardening can get a bit hazardous.
Rabbits (No. 8) can do a lot of damage but at least they only run, jump and dig - chipmunks can also climb so are even trickier to keep out. They may score highly on the cuteness scale but that is not much use if you are trying to grow vegetables. (They also, if Alvin and the Chipmunks are to be believed, have really irritating voices). In the same bracket come groundhogs - who can have about five burrows, each one requiring the excavation of about a cubic metre of soil - nearly a skipful in total. Enough to make a complete mess of the average garden.
And finally the idea of finding this tucking into your brassicas is enough to make most gardeners greet the next passing cypress aphid (No. 10) with civil words and offers of a cup of tea.
Comments
rachelarna
30 March 2008, 02.26PM
Thank you for your comment
Thank you for your comments. All comments will be looked at by a moderator, however, due to the numbers of comments we receive, we can't promise that all will be posted on the site.