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Prize Surprise

edited August 2017 in Writing
Amateur Gardening Editor of letters page Wendy Humphries sent me a beautiful book about gardening titled: 'No Dig Organic Home & Garden, Grow Cook Use and Store Your Harvest.'

Comments

  • That should be an interesting read for the mature gardener that can no longer take up his/her fork, Tricia, and also for people that have a disability. Great post.
  • No dig? Sounds very interesting!
  • edited August 2017
    If the author's, or any of you know of successful strategic manoeuvres against cabbage marauders I'm receptive.
  • If you're talking about caterpillars, the only strategy I know is. Spraying with a weak solution of washing up liquid - or picking the little buggers off one by one!
  • I'll try that Lizy. New book advises plenty of watering, so cabbages produce more leaves than the enemy can eat, presumably. The cabbages are covered with plastic mesh so only tiny insects can enter.
  • C2C2
    edited August 2017
    Cover your brassicas to protect them from the butterfly, they lay the eggs on the leaf usually on the underside, the plastic mesh could deter slugs.
    Some years are worse than others, I've not seen so many butterflies about this year, so the egg burden could be less, but I suppose this depends on the area of the country a person lives in.
  • Yes... we have lost 70%, yes, SEVENTY, of our butterflies so letting them have a nibble is the decent, green and sustainable thing to do. And take joy in them when they become butterflies.
  • The butterflies can feast on everything in the garden, so I see no reason to let them destroy our food.
  • edited August 2017
    So far something's only taken a mouthful or two of my cabbages. Plastic mesh seems to be deterring the so and so this time. Fab crop of onions and tomatoes this year and I picked a pound of blackberries today.
  • LizLiz
    edited August 2017
    The butterflies can feast on everything in the garden, so I see no reason to let them destroy our food.
    Butterflies eat different things, if they syphon nectar they can get it from any flower - some don't eat anything at all. but caterpillars have specific food and if you destroy them on a plant you are growing they can't eat anything else. They very rarely eat the whole thing. we remove some of them and leave the rest.
  • C2C2
    edited August 2017
    I've seen more Red Admiral and Comma this year, a few Speckled Wood, so far hardly any whites, but this evening I did rush in for my camera, a Green Veined White had settled on some ragwort during a shower, the underwing so beautiful.
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