Before
After. Oh, the huge manatee.
I was completely unprepared for this. Those poor little ravaged plants are/were mangetout, which are pretty hardy and not usually the first choice of pests. I've also had a few runner beans utterly stripped of all greenery and they normally grow faster than they can be eaten.
No, that's not a twig in front of the bamboo cane, it's a corpse
Last year, nothing touched my beans, probably because of the abundance of easy targets elsewhere in the garden. This year the big beds where brassica grow are protected with semi-permanent vegetable net cages and I think it's just deflected the attention onto my other plants.
Annoyingly enough, the nasturtium that I'm deliberately growing as sacrificial plants? Completely untouched. Choosy little bastards.
The annoying thing is that I have no idea what's doing it. It's too cold for butterflies and the very hungry
Because of this, I'm not sure of my options. Without knowing what's eating them, I can't plant companion plants to drive them away/provide an alternative food source that I don't care about. I don't have the patience to deal with netting across the whole garden and if it's small bugs, that won't do any good. The other alternative is to just keep planting in bulk, accept some wastage and try and get enough seedlings to adult plants to fill all the holes in the garden.
Plan C would be pesticides and I really don't want to resort to that again. I did last year, as I was furious with losing all of my cauliflower and cabbage to the depredations of the world's worst children's storybook character, but it accomplished nothing in terms of saving my plants and almost certainly did horrible things to the local bee and pollinator population.
After he'd finished eating 1 apple, 2 pears, 3 plums, 4 strawberries, 5 oranges and 1 green leaf, the Very Hungry Caterpillar felt quite ill. Do you know why that is darling? Because Daddy sprayed him thoroughly with Thiacloprid! It was too late to save Daddy's vegetables, of course, they were quite dead; but Daddy was buggered if he was going to let the little fucker live to enjoy his spoils. And that's why we have no more butterflies, no more bees and no more food in the world. Now, off to bed with you. Night night!
I value my morals and my views on sustainability, but it's really hard not to say, "Fuck it, it's only one garden; how much difference will it make?" when you keep coming outside to see your hard work has been utterly killed to feed something else.
Anyone got any bright ideas?
PJW
Could be many things, I'm afraid, up to and including mice and similar mammals. Personally I'd go with the 'grow more things than I intend to survive' option, and protecting seedlings with half-bottles or netting.
ReplyDeleteOverwintering caterpillars will be coming out around now, given the weather.
Oh yes, the cat problem - I've heard it said that male human urine works well to keep the little buggers off, so go and mark territory.
Egg shells. Plant your plants like normal and then cover the soil with a thin layer of crushed eggshell. This really has been one my my best plant protectors! If you want, I have a spare jar of egg shell you can have (so you can start now whilst building your own eggshell supply). Also, eggshell is a good fertilzier so it helps the soil whilst keeping beasties away!
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what it is, but I wouldn't rule our birds. Our winter broccoli was getting eaten and I couldn't understand what was eating broccoli in December... Then I saw Fatso the Pigeon pecking at it.
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