Pots of Fruit

Natural Slug Control

About 2 years ago we decided that no insects would be killed by us during our gardening exploits.  They may be annoying, eating the very things that you are caring for for months on end, but it just doesn't seem right to squish them or drown them in beer and fling them in a bush.  But, we never said anything about tossing them to the birds or simply uncovering them so some needy robins can have their lunch.  It feels a bit odd leading them to their doom and I still have to decide how I feel about that one, but for now I'll go with it. 

But to be honest, most of the slugs that we come across end up getting launched over the back wall or simply thrown into the under growth in the hope that they will find something extra specia and stay there.  I wrote a post before on how Chris constructed a raft that is more or less impervious to slugs and woodlice and to me this represents the best solution.  Make it easy for them to decide not to crawl all over your food...then there is no need to think about what to do with them.  The more delicate things like strawberries are reserved for this special treatment and every so often I do a bit of a check up and see how well the moats are working.  Over the winter we tended to let the water run dry and so I guessed that there were probably some hopefuls laying in wait for the fruiting time.  One way I have found to oust the slugs and woodlice from containers is to put the pot into a tray of water. 

As the slugs burrow their way into the bottom of the pots and live between the drainage material it would be impossible to pick them out so this is the only way to do it really.  After about 10 minutes the slugs give up and start to crawl out from their hiding places and make their way up the pot to escape the water.  They don't seem to be panicked or anything, but they don't want to stay submerged either.   You have to make sure collect the slugs before they make their way to soil level so they can hide again.  The woodlice don't seem to be able to get out of the water however.  They get prevented from leaving because of the surface tension of the water.  They tend to float around just under the surface wiggling their legs, hoping to push through, but it just doesn't work, so they need a little help.  If you put a little branch into the water they will gladly crawl up it.  If they stay in the water for too long they will die, I missed a couple, that's how I know :(, but they seem able to stay in for a couple of hours without too much harm.  The fact that slugs and woodlice can survive under water makes me wonder how they breath.  In fact I've just looked it up and according to Wikipedia they breath through their skin.  The woodlice may do the same although I really have no idea. 

I've always been interested in nature and I'm beginning to appreciate how interesting these "pests" are.  Each one of them has a strange and unique way of living in the world.  They are trying to survive and to eat what most helps them.  We would probably have more problems in the garden if they did not exist at all and so I won't be looking at them with irritation from now on.  We'll keep our moat operational and pick them out of other areas, but apart from that we'll leave them in peace while they collectively do a huge amount of work for us in the garden.

For more information on slugs visit here

Ladybirds and other Insects

The ladybird is one of those insects that you definitely want in your garden.  If you are growing anything that is susceptable to aphids (green fly, white fly etc) then this guy should be looked after so that he can flourish and eat all those little guys that can check the growth of your fruit.

Here is an example of an infestation of green fly on our fennel.  The fennel seems to have really tender flesh on it and this is where greenfly seem to thrive.  They will not get their jaws through tough stems and tend to congregate on young shoots.  On the left you can see a whole clump of at least one hundred green fly and on the right you can see a close up of the little critters.  In  general these guys won't do too much harm but if they get out of control they can slow down the growth of plants by quite a lot and possibly cause them to grow malformed. 

These little black flies caused quite a lot of damage to our cherry tree last year as a result of being "farmed" by ants.  Below you can see the damage it did to the leaves of the plant and the result was that our young cherry tree had a very stunted growth pattern.  So this year I was pleased to see our first ladybird who will hopefully be in the process of laying eggs so that there will be lots of hungry mouths to feed.   

The ladybird is known as the gardner's friend as they can eat up to 5,000 aphids over the year of its life, which can't be bad.  Don't think that I want all the aphids in our garden to die however.  I don't mind a few hanging around being part of the overall system and of course if they weren't in our garden then we would not get to see as many beautiful ladybirds.

The ladybird pictured below is a seven spotted ladybird and seems to be one of the ladybirds most commonly spotted in Ireland.  There are ladybirds with 24 spots, 5 spots, 9 spots, different coloured ones, different sizes etc.

They seem to like to live in gardens and anywhere that there is a bit of cover so if you are growing fruit on a balcony or somewhere similar it would be a good idea to grow something that will give the ladybird cover during the winter.  Most fruiting plants will loose their leaves in the winter so you'll have to think of other ways of giving them natural places to hide.   When growing food naturally it never seems to be a good idea to focus solely on what you are hoping to eat but to think about creating a healthy ecosystem within the space that you have.  For example, flowers will encourage pollinating bees and hover flies whose larvae will also eat lots of aphids.  If there are plenty of insects then birds will become a regular visitor and will play their part in balancing your garden.  I'm sure the list of plants, insects and other animals that should be given a home in your garden is quite long, but whatever you can do to help them at all will hopefully improve the success of your fruit growing.

HARLEQUIN LADYBIRD

I read today that the native species of ladybird may be under threat in Ireland.  Apparently the harlequin ladybird has just been spotted in Ireland on a consignment of vegetables from a major supermarket chain.  This ladybird which is a native of Asia was introduced into glass houses and other areas in Europe i n order to eat aphids (green fly etc) as they are better than other species of ladybird at eating the farmers' pests.  Obviously the harlequins have now become naturalised in many European countries including the UK and there seems to be a possibility that they will do the same here in Ireland.  Unfortunately they end up eating all the native ladybirds' food which means they die of starvation.  They will also eat the young of many insects if they are under pressure and so the natural balance had been upset again. 

Having read about this I have suddenly thought of another couple of reasons to grow your own food. Moving cargo from one country to another has always caused problems to local ecosystems.  The harlequin ladybird is getting a free ride on some vegetables and in the process getting the chance to invade new territories.  Obviously buying locally grown produce or growing your own food would be one step towards reducing this problem. 

Another problem with large scale agriculture is that people feel forced to use any methods available in order to increase profits or safe gaurd their livelihoods.  They may start using biological controls like the harlequin beetle without really understanding the consequences down the line.  By growing our own food without the pressure of needing to have the maximum yields we take the pressure off our ecosystems too.

Irish Ladybirds Website

More on Ladybirds

Nature's helpers

As with all organic food growing it is important to take advantage of nature's help along the way.  It will happily do lots of work for you if you let it.  This post is about the birds that help us in our garden and how our little robins in particular help to keep those annoying little creatures that live under the fruit pots in check.

Of course the fellas that live under the pots are only annoying if there are too many of them.  The odd wood louse or slug isn't the end of the world and they do plenty of useful work themselves.  They breakdown garden debris into food for plants and so they need to be allowed some space too.  If you allow nature to help keep things in a good balance then everything should work out ok when growing plants. When you think about it...say 200 strawberries grew in our garden this year and 30 were damaged by slugs it wouldn't be so bad.  It seems annoying but think about the amount of food that is thrown out by the food industry all the time.  I think only something like 15% of all the food that is grown gets consumed in the end.  The rest presumably gets rejected at quality control, gets damaged during transport and then goes off in the shops and possibly people's fridges.  So, doing a quick calculation....mmm... if we loose 30 of our strawberries from 200 we'd get about an 85% consumption rate.   Pretty good, and we didn't have to consume all those resources to produce it either. And, the slugs made some food for next years crop and for the beautiful birds that entertain us with their song.  So  our 15% loss in a particular crop is balanced out by gains elsewhere. 

So I have just convinced myself not to be too uptight about loosing a few bits of fruit to slugs etc.  In fact it may be a good idea to plant an of extra strawberry plant, for example, to account for any losses you might have.  But to make sure we don't loose all the fruit I let our little robins give us a helping hand.  We have discovered that we are in fact being trained by the robins that live in our garden.  They appear suddenly when we start doing any work in the garden in case we unearth any scrummy little insects.  They are very brave and come within a few feet of us in order to snap up any free dinners.  And the best bit is that if we move any plant pots then they will quickly jump in and gather up anyone living underneath.  This has the advantage of keeping all those insects at a reasonable population level.  So, I make sure to move a few pots every week and will probably try to do it every day from now on as the insects start to wake up from their winter slow down.  So Mr. and Mrs. Robin have set up quite a nice arrangement for themselves.  I think they must also think they posses magical powers, as every time they come close to us we freeze.  We know that we do this in the hope of not frightening them away but they must think we're strangely scared of them!

Here are some pictures of our robin before, during and after a bath on our greenhouse roof. Providing places for birds to have baths is important so that they will be happy living in the area and continue to keep the insects in check.

This bird bath happened by accident but we have seen how much it is used and there is often a queue of birds waiting to use it, seriously. Due to the fact that it is on a slope there is a deep end for big birds and a shallow end for little birds.  If a little bird is feeling brave it can manage to sneak a bath at the same time as a blackbird. Yesterday I got splashed as I walked by the greenhouse and looked around to see a brave little robin having his evening bath.

And here is the little guy looking like no robin I've ever seen before!  He's about 3 times his normal width.  He obviously went for the blow dry as well :)

I think that growing one's own food can be about so much more than simply receiving some tasty prizes at  the end of the season.  It is about becoming part of nature rather than remaining a sideline observer.  As the birds and insects, the wind, the sun and the rain all join in our task of growing fruit we can gain a lot of comfort.  There is something about nature that tries to keep drawing us in and that's probably because it's the right place to be.  It feels good to be out in the natural environement.  It feels better to be part of it.

Another blow dryer :)