The Prince's Rainforest Project

OK OK, so not technically a post related to our garden but it is a garden of sorts and an important one at that.

We watched Charlie delivering a great speech for the Dimbleby Lecture series on BBC last week. It was well scripted, expertely delivered and passiontely believed in. I think Charlie has sometimes been seen as a bit antiquated, he regularly speaks out against modern architecture and agricultural practices but he actually makes alot of sense, I think he's sometime seen out of context. He has some brilliant ideas that marry old and new.

Here is one of his current projects, please sign up.

Thanks

Aphid Wars: The Cavalry Arrive!

Just when we thought that we were on the losing side in our battle against the Green Army we've discovered that a new ally has arrived: The Parasitic Wasp Battalion!

These guys are dire enemies of aphids and actively seek them out. However, this isn't a buffet for the wasps but more a doggy bag for their unborn offspring. The wasps inject their eggs into the aphids and essentially use them as an incubator and creche. The egg grows inside the aphid, eats its way out, and then flies off to commit the same gruesome act on aphids of it's own choosing. Apparently each wasp is capable of parasitically impregnating up to 200.

Now we've also noticed as you may have seen from our last post on the Green Army that we had a good mixture of green and brown aphids. Well it now seems that the majority of our aphids are now brown and these seem to be the ones that have been impregnated by the wasps.

So if you see squadrons of small black wasps crawling and flying round your plants and looking rather interested in your aphid colonies then take heart for your allies have come to the call of battle.

Attack of the Aphids!!?

Look at the little beasties! Ground control to Major Tom.

We have an invasion! The aphids are colonising most of our plant life. A common problem admittedly but how to fight it is the ever pertinent question.

Here at The Little Gardeners we're always trying to keep it organic so the obvious problem solver, of a crate of lethal chems, is somewhat out of the scope of our arsenal.

At first I thought they were flea beetles as they were dark and first appeared on our radish crop. Of course that led us on a fruitless journey to find some Derris but appparently it's now illegal or on the verge of becoming so in the UK. However, looking at the shot above these guys have got the same config as the green aphids no matter whether they're brown or green. So, maybe what we have got here is a mixture of greenfly and blackfly? When we grew some tomatoes indoors last year we had some aphid and spider mite issues to contend with but the aphids were all green, no brown ones. So if anyone can pass a positive ID on these veg munching criminals then we'd love to hear from you!

In the meantime we've ordered a mercenary army of Ladybird larvae to come and fight the battle so we'll let you know how the squadron fare once they've been assigned to duty.

BB