|
- ‘Chomp
chomp chomp’, that’s the sound of slugs and snails eating their way
through your small seedlings, if you just had the ears to hear. Well we
might not have the ears but we have the eyes as proof. If you aim to raise a
crop, it be flowers for a spring display or winter vegies, then you may be
prompted to do something about them.
- There
are three different types of baits in the market place and they are not
equal. In price, performance or toxicity. The old-fashioned green bran
pellet has metaldehyde as its active agent. It is made by several companies
and works best when soil temperatures are high in late summer to early
autumn and again late spring and early summer.
- The
green metaldehyde is cheap and effective at those times of the year.
Unfortunately it breaks down quickly with rain or overhead watering and
snails are more active in winter, but it gets a good kill on slugs that move
more on summer nights.
- The
next type of snail and slug bait is the blue methiocarb or mesurol pellet.
Expensive, but you don’t need to use much and it’s effective through all
seasons, however toxic to the point where a few pellets will make a medium
sized dog very sick and may even kill a small dog.
- The
third type is a pale bran coloured pellet with an iron complex called
complexone on the label, gives the best control of snails and slugs in
autumn-winter-spring, but not in summer. It is safe to pets, so if you have
those concerns it’s worth looking for. It also breaks down to leave an
iron chelates residue in the soil that aids most of your plants.
- There
is of course the time tested method of putting out some old beer slops in a
shallow container and the hops attracts the slimy molluscs to a blissful
termination. Not to forget the torch and capture at night either. Then again
you just could do nothing at all.
- While
I’d be as guilty as any nurseryman in the 1970’s of overselling the
‘low-maintenance’ aspect of native plants, it’s time to stand up and
tell you that most of them benefit from pruning. There are a few exceptions,
such as wattles, that don’t seem to like it much, but the bottlebrushes,
honey myrtles, westringias, correas and grevilleas thrive on it.
- Keep
your pruning cuts to semi firm green wood rather than old hardwood and you
can’t go wrong. Now that we have mild days and cool nights the exposed
trunks are unlikely to get sunburnt, which they certainly do if exposed in
summer.
- There
is currently a lot of interest in growing native grasses in home gardens as
habitat for predatory insects. Those are insects like wasps, assassin bugs,
mantids that eat other insect pests and their pesky caterpillars and pupae
in particular. As for collecting your own seed and sowing it to get your
grassland, you will need lots of it and disturb the soil then just leave it.
Most native seeds can burrow into the soil themselves. We also have some
perennial grasses that are easily divided too.
- If
you have completed your bulb planting and standing back waiting to be
blitzed with colour, why not spread some Virginian Stock seed over the area.
It will germinate quickly and has a shallow root run, so as not to interfere
with the bulbs and will provide a great foil of tiny lilac-pink flowers
after the bulbs have finished flowering in spring.
- Another
hardy little complimentary annual is the annual Toadflax a rather
uncomplimentary name for Linaria, best grown from seed, since it does not
like root disturbance. In a sunny and rocky area it will self-seed too.
- We’ve
noticed that we have had no aphids at all on the roses this autumn and have
noticed a papernest wasp’s nest under our front eves near the roses. We
have also watched the wasps hovering over the roses swooping on small
insects and spiders, so maybe they have eaten the aphids too. We certainly
won’t be dashing their carefully constructed nest down.
|
