Mauve Monday

Today ventured out into the garden to see what's flowering after all the rain we've had, and I'm noticing a theme... deja vu anyone?

 

I've heard that flowers in this colour range are great for attracting insects (and therefore insect-eating birds) and the insect diversity definitely seems to be increasing, so I must be doing something right!

 

 

Melaleuca decussata

  

Melaleuca thymifolia

 

Lagerstroemia hybrid

 

Allium sp.

 

Photo of the week - friends in the garden

We visited the Hunter Region Botanic Gardens last December, and bought a few plants on the way out. A definite favourite was Guichenotia macrantha, with velvety purple ballgown-shapes flowers, and brown fuzzy seed capsules. This one has grown beautifully in the garden ever since, in a dry sunny part of the new native garden. It's now covered in these stunning flowers, and insects like this friendly spider are hanging about in it. What a winner!

Photo of the week - Lady and the tramp



 

In amongst my vegetables, there are lots of little creatures going about their day. Just a little bit of patience is all it takes to get a glimpse into their busy world. My favourites to watch are the lady beetles, members of the family Coccinellidae. They are all rounded, most are yellow,orange or red, and have a number of spots on their wing-covers. In my garden, there are 2 common types: the small orange beetles with 2 large black blotches, and the larger yellowish beetles with many small spots.

 



Coccinella transversalis

 

"28-spotted Ladybeetle" Epilachna sumbana

The first is a friendly little fellow, and seems to hang about feasting on the occasional aphid or scale, or the mildew that grows on the leaves of my zucchini and squash. The second actually eats the leaves themselves. My simple rule of thumb for ladybeetles is: A few spots is good. Lots of spots is bad. If in doubt, I tend to think of Cruella DeVille. Even the babies don't look as friendly! See:

 

 

I'm sure in this case you can guess which is the unfriendly visitor just by looking, but if you were in your own garden, just have a look what they're doing. Beetles go through a number of larval stages so it's sometimes difficult to tell who is who, but the tell-tale scraping marks on the leaf are a good sign that this is a leaf-eating beetle.

 

The good news is that in general, they don't eat much. I don't spray the 'bad' insects at my place for fear of scaring off (or killing off) the good ones. If you have a healthy balance in your garden, a few nasty beetles aren't an issue and will only result in a few unsightly half-chewed leaves. Their populations can boom quickly if the weather is right, but birds generally catch up pretty quickly. I have a few larger shrubs and trees growing between the veg for insect hunters to gather in, and as they grow I'm seeing more birds all the time. As always, variety is the key!

 

 

And for those that are curious, my apple tree is still flowering away... sigh...

Nerd alert: Friends in the garden

Now that I do an extra 2 hours of travelling to work and back every day, I'm getting home after dark, which leaves me no time to do my usual garden scouting (watering, checking for pests and diseases, looking for new fruit/flowers, and seeing what's ready to eat). The upside of this is that I get up excited on the weekend to see the changes in the garden over the week. One Saturday this month I was picking the caterpillars off my Tuscan kale (as you do...) when I noticed that one looked a bit suspicious! He wasn't moving, had some yucky black spots on him, and was laying on a pile of yellow cushions. There was also a little black insect sitting nearby.

Apanteles glomerata adult and pupae

I'm quite familiar with these caterpillars, they are the larvae of the white cabbage butterfly (Pieris rapae) and they eat big holes in the leaves of brassicas. I've seen the butterflies flitting about my broccoli and kale, laying tiny little yellow eggs, and I've washed them off when cleaning the leaves to eat. So I know they are as small as a pinprick, not big and fluffy like these things.
I've also studied some entomology as part of my horticulture degree, enough to recognise the little black critter as a tiny wasp. They are closely related to ants, and have a similar body shape with 3 distinct segments.
After a bit of research, I've discovered the wasp is a parasite called Apanteles glomerata, who lays her eggs inside caterpillars. After hatching, the baby wasps eat their way out of the offending caterpillar, and spin little yellow cocoons. When they come out of the cocoons, they are fully developed wasps (albeit very small) who will find a mate, and then an unlucky caterpillar. Although it's a grisly way to feed your children, it's quite handy for me, as wasps like these control the numbers of caterpillars in my veggies so that there are more for me to eat.
For me, the moral of the story is this- not using pesticides in my garden means safety for the insects that are actually helping me out. I hope the wasps that come out of these cocoons hang around my garden and find every one of those pesky caterpillars! It's a beautiful system (in a disgusting way) and I'd hate to interfere.