The Pests And Diseases In Garden Leaves

Whatever you do, it is essential that you try as many methods as possible and do not give up in your attempts to keep this particularly unpleasant creature out of your garden, or at least keep its numbers at a low level. These seem to be one of the pests that occurs in plagues. They were a big problem in Victorian gardens, then vanished, to recur again recently. Probably not unconnected with the habits of the plant trade, as the adults cannot fly. What is eating these circular holes around the edges of the leaves on my plants? Several have been attacked, but the problem seems to be particularly bad on my wisteria and my roses.

The neat edges to the circular or elliptical holes is typical of damage by a leaf-cutting bee and makes it easy to distinguish this from the holes that other pests, such as caterpillars, slugs or vine weevils, might make in foliage It is the female bee who is responsible for removing the leaf sections and she does not in fact eat them, but uses them to construct little 'pods' into which she lays her eggs. I always think that these look rather like miniature cigars - they are made up of numerous leaf circles woven together. You may find them in the compost in old flowerpots or occasionally in rotten wood. A leaf-cutting bee will make lots of these structures and, when each one is finished, she fills it with a supply of pollen and nectar and then lays one egg in each, before closing it off with another circle of leaf.

You may have seen the bees around your garden and not recognized them for what they are, as they are very similar to honey bees, but have distinctly gingery-coloured hair beneath their abdomens - not the sort of thing you are going to notice easily! Although occasionally they can cause quite disfiguring damage, it is rarely that bad and is certainly of no significance as far as the plant's health is concerned, so I would not suggest that you do anything to attempt to control them. In any case, you should bear in mind that they are also useful pollinators.My mother has been looking after a colony of leaf-cutting bees for some years, because they make their 'tubes' down the insides of the plant pots in her greenhouse. I'm sure she wishes they would go away sometimes, but she cannot bring herself to get rid of them. They like the dry soil of pots holding cacti, succulents and dormant hippeastrum best.

It certainly sounds as if the larvae of the carrot fly have been responsible, as they carry out damage exactly as you described and attack all the plants you mentioned. An added problem is that, once the roots have been tunneled, they are very open to secondary infections, in particular both bacterial and fungal rots, which can mean that they will not store.

The Garden Pests And Diseases In Wallflowers

What is causing these tiny, near-circular holes on the leaves of my rocket and radish plants? Something similar seems to have attacked aubretia, alyssum, wallflowers and nasturtiums, but all is sure these tiny beetles are flea beetles, a species of Phyllotreta. They measure in length and are most commonly very shiny and black, but occasionally have a bright-yellow stripe; or they can be yellowy brown or metallic blue, depending on the species. These beetles eat the tiny rounded holes in the upper surface of the leaf, and you may have noticed that sometimes they don't actually eat right the way through the leaf, but leave a brownish-white spot of dry leaf tissue. On older plants these pests may have little effect or just check the growth slightly, but they can sometimes kill seedlings, if they do a lot of damage. There are lots of different types of flea beetle and the damage is most commonly seen on brassicas, including those you described, but also Swedes and turnips. There is another type of flea beetle that will also attack the foliage of potatoes and the Chilean potato vine. Flea beetles will feed between the middle of spring and the end of summer, and in bad years the injury they cause can set plants back quite a bit.

Control is difficult, but you should do everything you can to encourage seedlings to grow strongly, so that they can compensate for any damage that occurs. This includes keeping plants well watered and only sowing seeds at a time when you think germination and early growth will be rapid and vigorous. You could also consider using pesticides such as Derris, Politest and Sybol. I have heard people suggest that you can trap flea beetles by disturbing the foliage and at the same time holding a batten of wood covered in non-setting glue just above the leaves. The idea is that the beetles jump in the air and get stuck to the adhesive surface. An interesting idea, but I suspect that it is rather too time-consuming and a bit too unreliable for me but that's up to you.The damage is typical of that caused by capsid bugs or plant bugs. The common species of both are in length when fully grown and they feed by sucking the plant's sap. As they do this they produce a toxin that kills off the plant cells in the area penetrated by the insects' mouth parts. This causes the brown spots to develop and the leaves or shoot tips.

The Plants Pests And Diseases

That the gases seem to cause the mole to run away initially, but it survives and returns once the gas has dispersed. It has also been suggested that if you plant the caper spurge around the area, this acts as a mole deterrent — once again I'm afraid to say that the results I have seen have never really impressed me at all. The most effective method seems to be setting mole traps, and although you can purchase these from some garden centres or direct from the manufacturers, they are quite difficult to set effectively and if you do not do the job properly you could end up either making the mole suffer a lot or failing to catch it at all. You can also buy humane traps, which allow the mole to enter without being killed. You can then attempt to move it to another location and release it, but I am always rather concerned that in the process of doing this it is likely that the mole will die of fright anyway.

So the long and short of it is that there is no truly reliable method. Perhaps the one means of controlling them that most people find effective is to employ a mole catcher, but finding a mole catcher may be nearly as hard as controlling the mole you. Moles can be kept from uprooting plants with three giant pins made from old bicycle spokes or wire coathangers. These can be removed once the plant is well established. A row of seedlings can also be protected with the same pins. Beds, greenhouses and even lawns can be completely protected by embedding narrow-gauge wire chicken mesh horizontally in the soil.

There are lots of things you can try, but rather as with moles, the results can be variable. Some gardeners find that using humming or buzzing lines, which you can buy from garden centres, works well. These are attached between two posts or poles, are held tight and vibrate in the wind, producing a noise that is only just audible to the human ear, but which seems to deter birds quite effectively. You can make a similar device yourself using the insides of an audio cassette tape.Other deterrents, such as scarecrows or shapes cut to look like cats (with marbles used for eyes), tinfoil-pie cases dangling from strings, and so forth will potentially deter birds, but generally speaking the birds soon realize that they do not pose a real threat and return anyway. Your best bet is, therefore, to choose a wide range of devices and use them all in succession so that the birds don't get a chance to get too used.

The Special Situations Soil Types

The chalk is a maximum of below the soil surface. Chalky soils tend to be free-draining and dry out in the summer, so digging in lots of compost will help the soil to hold moisture. Alkaline soils are ideal for a range of shrubs, and this selection will all grow to at least. Lilacs are all sweetly scented and flower in early summer. Remove the dead flower heads immediately after flowering. The shrub rose variety 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' has single pink flowers in summer and deFearly summer.

Mock orange produces large s single white flowers with a maroon blotch in the centre and flowers in summer with a strong fragrance. Osman thus delavayi likes an alkaline soil and has small dark evergreen leaves with clusters of small, fragrant white tubular flowers in spring. And there are many more, including Berberis darwinii, Olearia macrodonta, Buddleia davidii and Forsythia variety 'Lynwood have an alkaline soil and I would like to grow rhododendrons and heathers, but I am not sure if this is possible.There are some heather, such as Erica vagans and E. terminal's, that will tolerate a limy soil, but the majority of heathers and heaths do need an acid soil. The best way to get round the problem is to make raised beds by forming walls using second-hand railway sleepers or bricks, and filling the bed with imported soil that has been tested and is free of lime. Rhododendrons are shallow-rooting and dislike being planted deeply.

A simpler and cheaper method is to mound the imported soil without using side walls and then plant the heathers, which don't require deep soil, on the shallow lower part of the slope.The soil in a raised bed is more likely to dry out, so dig in lots of compost at planting time and surface mulch to retain moisture Analysis for acid or alkaline soil is shown as a pH reading where is neutral, below  is acid and readings above that are alkaline or limy.

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Pests More Obvious Than The Damage

Please tell me what I can do about the ants in my garden: they seem to be becoming more and more of a problem each year. I find the heaps of fine soil on the lawn and in the flowerbeds and they drive us mad when they invade the terrace, where we try to eat lunch or the children try to play.

Although it is certainly possible to reduce the number of ants in your garden, I'm afraid to say that it is highly unlikely that you will ever succeed in eradicating them completely. I suggest that you concentrate your efforts on trying to kill off the ants in those nests that are causing real problems.

The best thing you can do is to treat the nests with any one of the many proprietary ant powders or dusts, or with one of the sprays. There are many different ones available and it is important that you try to disturb the nest before treating the inhabitants. To do this you may wish to protect yourself by wearing a pair of wellingtons and ensure that you disturb the nest using a garden fork, rather than by hand.

Phytophthora infestans. Ideally you should practise a two-to-three-year crop rotation, which should ensure that the disease will not carry on from year to year. Infection of the tubers is likely to have taken place if the infected foliage was left on the plant, as this will have allowed spores to be washed down into the soil as soon as it rained or you irrigated the crop.Next year, if you grow potatoes again you could consider spraying with a copper-based fungicide, such as Traditional Copper or Bordeaux Mixture, or an unrelated fungicide called Dithane 945. Ideally the chemical should be applied as soon as any weather conditions that are likely to encourage blight develop.