Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Good bugs

On Sunday we had another awesome busy bee at Hilton Harvest. It makes me feel all happy and satisfied to see lots of folk chatting, working and dreaming together at the garden.



We mulched paths, edged garden beds, weeded, planted and Simon got the compost shelter to 'lock up'!

We have been really trying to get the skills sharing thing happening by having little morning tea share time during the busy bees. This month we had some special guests. Emma Jack and her lovely Living Smart group come along to lend some hard yakka and Emma had also organised two guest speakers to share there wisdom on good garden bugs. Vicky works at Dawson's Garden Centre and has a blog that features good critters. We also had Gerald from the Organic Growers Association Freo who I suspect knows more about gardening than all of us combined. He said he was a bit old for the manual work, but it was his wisdom we were after!


The take home message for me was don't panic about aphids or other bad bugs because you need them to attract the good or 'predator' bugs who eat them. The other thing I remember about Vicky and Gerald's talk was to check your garden every day to make sure you know exactly what's going on, and then observe and be patient...the good bugs will come! I struggle with patients in the garden. Often I sew seeds in a tray then that very day go and purchase a punnet of the very same veggie to plant 'TODAY!'. Ads had noticed a few aphids on our wonderful orange tree and was making noises about spraying with white oil. Lucky we didn't because, when we got home from the busy bee we checked our garden and...as if on cue, look...ladybirds everywhere!




...and I'm pretty sure this is a ladybird larve - the ones that to the actual chomping of the offending aphids. Cool hu? Gardens are amazing and wonderful places!




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