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South Australia - 27th January 2003
A reader in Linden Park wants to know how to revive
her Fiddlewood that’s been in a pot of the past 20 years. I think consign it
to the Burnside City Council’s green organics collection next week. Twenty
years for a Fiddlewood in a pot is definitely past its ‘use by’ date, but
well done, so start again.
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Black lawn beetles are starting to make their presence felt. They show up first as unexplained dry patches in an otherwise healthy lawn. Then the odd beetle will be seen on your paths or Mudlarks busy scratching around for their larvae. Their larvae are cream coloured witchery grub looking things and they eat the roots of your lawn as well as the beetles. Controlling black beetle infestations are a perennial problem, since the beetles are on the wing at night and they reinfest so easily at this time of year. The zapp’em approach is to use chlorpyrifos granules, watered in and then keep your pets off for at least three days. A softer approach is a new product on the market called “Professor Mac’s 3 in 1 Lawn and Garden” which was developed by Prof. McMaugh and contains all sort of micro organisms and natural oils that offer resistance to lawns to ward off the usual vagaries and infestations. It’s been trailed with amazing results on fairways and bowling greens. This is a rather delicate subject but, much of Adelaide’s metropolitan area gets a rat infestation at this time of year, caused in part by fruit dropping without being harvested that provides lots of food. If you doubt the accuracy of this statement just walk the lanes and byways of the eastern and south eastern suburbs at night! Control is to use Ratsak® daily and on the seventh day the rats develop acute haemorrhaging due to the build-up of coagulating agents in the Ratsak® that you applied all week. The real fun then starts, trying to locate dead and smelling rats. The good news is that your dog won’t get a lethal dose from gnawing at a dead rat. But lay the baits preferably up high in a one-metre section of PVC pipe. I wire mine to a fence that is a known rat path. That way doves and dogs don’t feed on the pellets. Some local councils supply free baits on demand. There is a one-off Ratsak® kill too. With all the dropping fruit around at present they breed up fast unless controlled. A Smithfield Plains reader has detected termites in the wood of various fruit trees in his garden that is slowly killing them limb-by-limb. Local pest exterminators weren’t interested in the garden infestation, only the house. Reasons for that are that the chemicals they use (Aldrin and heptachlor) are registered only for under-floor or concrete slab use and not in the garden due to long residue times and toxicity. |
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