[Fleecewife]

This year we have bought in three predators to deal with insect infestation.  Two are for red spider mite, which caused us to cut down and burn our cucumbers, the other is for aphids.  So for the aphids of course it's    - barnie bees we call them.  Today 25 of the little darlings arrived and I set off to spread them around.  Little b"#%@3*$  .  I decided I had to transfer them from the flat box they came in into a tube (MSU for the nurses out there).  Would they go?  No, they set off in every direction, up my arms, on my jumper, flying off around the scullery, anywhere but into the tube.  It took me ages to catch them all.  Then I went out to put them on the relevant plants - oh no, we're not coming out onto those roses, at least not alone, lets all make a dash for it lads  .  So more of them got out than I wanted to as I still had the veg garden and tunnel to populate.  Same farce - we're not coming out, and when we do we don't want to be on these plants, so lets fly off chaps  . I managed to keep 3 in the tube to go outside.  need I say we had the same performance out there too, made worse because by then it was raining     The little devils had better start eating and breeding PDQ.  You wouldn't believe I love barnie bees would you?  And maybe today I didn't.  I had to go in for a cuppa after that     

[Lesley Silvester]

 


You'll love them when all the aphids are gone.

[pgkevet]

I recall buying in parasitic wasps when i was growing tropical exotics in the 'old days'. They hatched out. took one look at the amount of whitefly and beat a hasty retreat to an easier life - or so i assumed since they made no dfference to the whitefly populations. After menay years of battlig such issues i finally gave up growing stuff the whitefly really liked.
Hree aphids ahven;t been much of a problem.. I guess they don't like wet wales as much. I used to get good control with ecover washing up liquid, cooking oil and water mix sprayed on them before.. by the time the ladybirds breed up the beans would have been overwhelmed.

[Fleecewife]

We've always encouraged natural predators, which is why I never use those hateful yellow sticky traps which catch and slowly kill predators and pests alike.  I don't know what predates on red spider mite other than the predatory mites I have bought - which are easy to use as you just hang up a small envelope amongst the plants.  We have had such big problems with the mites that I'm very hopeful about the predators.
For the    our numbers here have dropped almost to zero.  We do get aphids on the roses, which don't thrive anyway at this elevation of 1,000' (the roses) and we've had none in the tunnel for years.  So even though the little devils drove me to distraction yesterday I'm very hopeful they will do their job.  We don't have heavy aphid numbers, so I'm hopeful the    will make a difference.

[pgkevet]

https://www.rhs.org.uk/Advice/profile?pid=190

Three predators apparently.

[Fleecewife]

We can't have any wild predators for red spider mite as we have had horribly bad infestations in the past and I have seen absolutely nothing predating them.
The predators I bought in for them are Phytoseiulus persimilis, a mite, and Amblyseiulus andersoni, another mite which is not wholely reliant on spider mite to survive.
The first one hasn't arrived yet, but we put out the second one a few days ago.  They all need to get reproducing.
I had thought that our place would be too cold for bought predators, so I'm hoping they survive.

[Fleecewife]

I was just looking to see what is making holes in a damson tree's leaves when I spotted an anthocoris bug in a curled leaf.  I squashed it because they give a painful and itchy bite, but I shouldn't have done because they predate aphids.  A bit of an own goal.

[Fleecewife]

The Phytoseiulus arrived today (funnily enough also in an MSU tube  ) and had to be sprinkled.  That wasn't that easy either, as the leaves hang down so I think I got more on the ground than on the plants, and the tomatoes are way taller than me so sprinkling the upper reaches was difficult.
With all three of my predators now in place, I'm hoping for a bug free year    although the greenfly are still multiplying to provide a feast once the barnie bees have also multiplied.

[Malcolm Brown]

We have used nematodes from the wonderfully named Nemasys company against slugs in potatoes.  We have had the big orange foreign jobbies appearing and the nematodes have been highly successful.  This year we are trying the ones that are supposed to tackle above ground raiders.  Hmmm... is there a nematode that eats pigeons I wonder.

[Lesley Silvester]

Is you hear of one that eats pigeons, please let me know.

[Fleecewife]

Is you hear of one that eats pigeons, please let me know.

Yes, it's called a cat  .  One year we moved to married quarters in Fife, from our previous quarter in Anglesey. Once I knew the moving date I knew I could only grow brassicas to plant out so late. We filled half the new back garden with them and they grew amazingly well, so well that all the pigeons from miles around wanted to sample them.  Our Siamese Guinevere used to hide among the plants then when a pigeon came in to land she would launch herself out of the greenery as if she was on a spring, claws stretched out.  Actually, I don't remember her ever catching a pigeon but they soon learned to keep away - it was that or heart attacks all round.

[Malcolm Brown]

My daughters staffy was an incredible ratter she became old and fat but she could move at incredible speed when the need arose.  We had one or two cats about the place when we had livestock, but Corky was outstanding.  She was not friendly with anyone, she would stand next to me at feeding time but touching was verboten.  Dogs of whatever breed developed cat blindness when they were near her, but there were no rats, mice or any other vermin while she was around.