Pests

What was your worst pest this year?

For us we had a bumper crop of slugs and snails, I know they are an ever present problem but this year was ridiculous. Early on in mid Spring we had a load of vine weevil grubs (promptly dispatched).

The one insect that is usually a pest due to the pear tree was barely noticable this year, the wasp. I saw a whole load of them on the Ivy flowers yesterday but have seen very few otherwise.

Spider mites always - well, this year we have had lots of "villakilpikirva"s, don't know how you call them in English. The white ones that don't move much?

Whitefly - nasty little pest! I couldn't get rid of them on the Calceolarias so I sprayed the lot and it seems to have worked so far.

No, they aren't whiteflies. I'll try to get the name somewhere...

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Got the scientific name for it - Platococcus citri: http://www.agro.bayer.gr/fyto_images/wine_pseudokokos.jpg

Looks familiar?

For us it's been wasps. We have a wasps nest in the wall of the house and they have been getting high on all the fruit around. Plums, greengages and apples have been their target not so good when harvesting the fruit and the wasps are there already. My other half has been stung a few times, finding a nest in the compost heap. There are still plenty of the little creatures around.

Not really had much problem with slugs and snails, cos i have got frogs galore, and i also have been doing nightly searches with a torce, catch hundreds that way.

Ahhh Evert that looks like a scale insect or mealy bug, I hate having to deal with those. I use a cotton wool bud dipped in methylated spirits and dab each one with it. How do you cope with them?

Southmede it's horrible when wasps get around the softer fruit isn't it. I don't know why they haven't been here much, perhaps they decided to stay with you this year!

Sheila, we also have frogs (about 8) and a couple of toads about, not to mention the slowworm and occasional passing hedgehog. The poultry here are a good defense against slugs and snails too but even they didn't make much of a dent in the population. Perhaps we had particularly tasty leaves this year *G*

millions of slugs and snails.

One night recently I was crunching them as I walked in the garden soooo out came the blue stuff over the next few nights there were 100s dead in the morning. muhawhawhaw

Baa, I use cotton stick and spirits (Sinol - denaturoitu sprii) - it works.. But won't kill the ones you don't notice. :/

Ick Ick Ick Mark! That's the good thing about the blue pellets, they are about the most effective measure even if they do leave them even more squashy than ever.

Evert, very true you have to be eagle eyed to spot all of them

I have been doing the nightly round with torchlight to get rid of the slugs, armed with salt cruel but effective. The neighbours must think I'm potty but I don't care...now it's colder I am reluctant to venture out away from the fire.

I had fewer slugs and snails this year (I stopped using mulches!) but, for the first time, had my gooseberries and redcurrants attacked by gooseberry sawfly - they denuded a bush in 2 hours. Both my gooseberry bushes were defoliated but by the time they'd got to the redcurrants I'd been out and bought a spray (derris based, I think). The recurrant didn't suffer too much, the dessert gooseberry has regrown all its leaves but the Invicta gooseberry is looking very sorry for itself with bare branches and new growth at the ends of the branches. That was the first one to be attacked (it was its bare skeleton seen out of the corner of my eye when colecting a lettuce that caused me to notice it.

Also, for the first time, I had soil aphids, which killed all my pansies on the balcony. I think they came in with a bought plant.

So, you reduce one pest (slugs) and others move into fill the gap!

SLUGS !!!!

The slug population seemed to explode around the beginning of September, but it wasn't our normal black slugs, it was the Spanish Brown Slugs which have no natural enemies here in Northern Europe. Neither hedgehogs, toads, magpies,nor chickens will eat them.

I cut one in two or three pieces, and leave them near the beds, and since their buddies are all cannibals, they come out to eat the cadaver. Then I cut a few of them up and sit them in "tactical" positions.

I caught 85 within one rainy evening by this method, and these wee b***ers are faster than you think, when they smell their dinner..... they gallop. Slugs can "smell" food from up to 10 metres away, so I had a good clean out. I have used this method rather than the blue pellets, which I used to use, since they make the birds which eat the slugs sterile, thus eventually killing off our friends as well as our enemies.Below is a picture of a Spanish Brown (sadly blurred because of torrential rain), above there is a picture of a normal black slug, so you can see the difference in size of these beasts. This one was about 5 inches long, and I'm sure it growled at me.

*wwwwahaaahhh* *shivers on the spine*

Wintermoor



This message was edited Saturday, Oct 26th 5:47 AM

Wow Wintermoor, that looks like a monster from the deep!

I don't use any chemicals here for controlling pests, so far encouraging the guys that eat the pests has worked. I didn't know that about the blue slug pellets though, so will make extra certain to avoid those.

I have been told that, if you put out a shallow dish filled with beer, slugs and snails will drown in it.
I use "That's-It" by METRO Biological Laboratory of Cypress, Ca. and it really works.

Yes Ulrch that's correct, but the dish must be deep enough to drown the slugs. Beer traps should be deep enough to allow the dead slugs to fall to the bottom, letting the still sober slugs to get at the beer. The drawback with this method is that many slugs have a drink of beer then slime away into a corner without actually landing IN the beer.

I catch more slugs by my method explained above than by any other.

All the best

Wintermoor

Our snails here are descendants of Weinbergschnecken (Escargot) which some nut imported a long time ago for his restaurant business, or something like that. Those, and our slugs, are vegans, as far as I know.

They'd be tasty with garlic butter though Ulrich ;)

To each his own, yekch, phooee, brrr . . .

All slugs are cannibals, and will eat any other part of an injured slug, that's what makes them so easy to catch.

Wintermoor

Ulrich, sell them to French restaurants! Have to admit that it's not my idea of a good meal either but then I'm not a great lover of garlic.

Wintermoor

Interesting stuff ... and ..... ickkkkkyyyyyyy

Found a vine weevil grub again on Tuesday, he didn't last long, nor did the Lily Beetle although this year hasn't been too bad for those (touch wood)

Excuse me, but I couldn't help noticing that we have some slug experts here. I'm just posting this picture of one of my slugs. Is this fellow full of eggs, constipated, or just trying to look sexy?

You guys gonna have me puke, barf, vomit and throw up yet!
Das ist ja zum Kotzen!

Perhaps it's just a snail that's carelessly mislayed it's shell LOL

Well, with or without a shell, he definitely looks like he's having a bit of a digestive problem! We had a relatively idealic spring and early summer sluggywise. It was rather dry, so the slugs were just not appearing. However, when the rainy weather began, they made an appearance!

I used to carry a yogurt container with about an inch of salt in the bottom so that I could drop the little fellows in there to melt. One early morning, while melting slugs and sipping coffee, I almost took a "slug" of slug.. I still shudder thinking about it!

These days I carry a small pair of scissors and just snip them in half, leaving them to serve as fertilizer or slug food. Periodically, I put out some iron phosphate slug bait. It is suspended it some sort of grain based pellet that attracts the slugs. It takes several days for them to die, but they quit feeding fairly quickly. The pellets hold up fairly well in the rain, and they are harmless to other creatures. In the US, it goes under the name of "Sluggo" or "Escargot".

looks like it's mantle has an infection

Probably nothing a bit of salt won't cure - I've heard it's a very effective disinfectant
;)