Both are introduced from Asia and North Africa. The spotted variety lives on decaying matter and often lives well away from home gardens, but is known to eat its dead mates and other snails and slugs. The other variety has what are best described as parallel stripes along its sides and they hide under pots and eat live plant roots often in the pots and stems of seedlings as well as their odd dead comrade and are prolific in home gardens. Even snails will eat their crushed colleagues too, as well as live plants. So there, the problem is solved. Even the goodies are not that good!

A local reader enquires as to what she might do with a pond that’s continually murky and covered in algae. She’d located it in full sun and planted oxygenating plants, but to no avail. I’d suggest introduce some small comet goldfish and water snails, plant lots more oxygenating plants and remove any Azolla or Duckweed that floats on the surface as soon as it appear. I think that plant is nothing but trouble.

Avocados have got to be the most perverse of all flower plants. I frequently hear of folk who have planted their favourite ‘Hass’ and one of its recommended co-pollinators ‘Bacon’ (only if you have a large garden), ‘Edranol’ or “Sharwil’ and yet they still don’t get many fruits on the ‘Hass’.

The problem is that Hass flowers open this morning (day 1) when their stigmas are receptive to pollen, but then by midday they close up and only open again tomorrow afternoon (day 2) when they release their pollen from the same flowers that first opened on day 1. The co-pollinators do more or less the opposite, but plant another ‘Hass’ in a cooler aspect (or a warmer aspect) in the same garden or your neighbour’s and you only need an hour’s overlap with their flowering cycle and you will get loads of fruit. Perverse eh?

Many thanks to ‘Nan’ the Impatiens lady in Toorak Gardens who supplied me with enough seed to send to all 70 readers who requested it. I wish you all success and the resultant plants will grow to 70cm tall and as wide, which certainly leaves some of the modern cultivars for dead.

I was reminded last week that the active agents, which I mentioned as being used by professional termite exterminators to control white ants, have been banned for the past 6 years. Even the chlorpyros that I mentioned which had been available for home garden control was withdrawn from sale as of 31^{st December 2001 and currently chemical companies are shriving to lodge alternative products for registration. From the PIRSA inFinder database it appears as though the only above ground or in ground termite bait station registered for home garden use now is ‘Recruit’ 5g/kg with hexaflumuron as the active agent.}

I got a sad letter from a local would-be gardener who has been astounded that her garden has soil with a pH 10 reaction. Ouch! She claims she’s spread leaves from street trees all over the garden in an effort to introduce acidic ‘mulch’ and even spread neat fertilizer that showed up as acidic on her pH tester. Ouch again!

The secret of turning leaf litter to real mulch is to compost and even at the end the composted mulch will be about pH neutral and never add fertilizer in such quantities that it changes your soil pH. That’s a sure way to produce salt toxicity and kill your plants. The only sustainable solution to alkaline soil is to select lime tolerant plants and at least there are plenty of them!

A Coromandel Valley gardener enquires as to what she might do with a pond that’s continually murky and covered in algae. She’d located it in full sun and planted oxygenating plants, but to no avail. I’d suggest introduce some small comet goldfish and water snails, plant lots more oxygenating plants and remove any Azolla or Duckweed that floats on the surface as soon as it appear. I think that plant is nothing but trouble.

I’m astounded at the nonsense that passes for gardening wisdom on some radio talkback gardening shows. I heard someone telling a concerned organic vegetable gardener recently that the brown patch on the end of his tomatoes was caused by irregular watering! It’s called “blossom end rot’ and it is caused by nothing other that a lack of calcium in the soil. The only remedy is to lime your soil with garden lime and the response is immediate. One handful per plant is adequate.