Bug life in the garden

To make a change from working in the garden, I chose to sit and relax in the late afternoon. Whilst sitting in the dappled shade as the sun started to disappear behind the trees I decided to feed the birds. Making sure not to leave out the ground feeders, I put out a dish with some suet pellets and live mealworms, covering it with an old hanging basket frame. Within 30 minutes a robin came to feast on the mealworms. My favourite feral pigeon, Speckled Jim, turned up with a few friends but I did see another side to him today. As I crushed a fat ball (the feral pigeons' fave food) Jim wouldn't allow any of the others to come close to the tasty treats and was quite vocal about it too!

Aside from the birds, there are many living creatures in the garden. At night time there's a hedgehog and foxes, while the pond which had plenty of frogs now has tadpoles. However, there's much more going on and it's the smaller creatures that I thought would be worth mentioning this time.

The insect world is an old and varied one, and insects still play a vital role in the Earth's careful balance of life. Here's some that you may or may not recognise:

Ladybird

An easy one to spot in your garden when it's in adult form. A brightly coloured beetle, the ladybird's favourite food is the aphid, making this creature a gardener's friend. In larva stage the ladybird looks very different. It's black with some bright coloration. Like it's adult parents, the larva also eats soft bodied insects such as aphids.

Adult ladybird

Ladybird larva

Flea beetle

There's quite a few species of flea beetle in the UK and some will feed on brassicas (cabbages, turnips etc), with the adults feeding on the leaves and larva feeding on the roots. I have had flea beetle damage on my brassicas on the allotment a few years ago. The damage was easily spotted as was the flea beetle as I could see several of them. They are very small, measuring only a couple of millimetres, but they have a distinctive flea like behaviour of jumping that gives them away.

You can just about see here the larger hind legs that enable the flea beetle to jump to safety if disturbed.

My turnips with flea beetle damage. I can honestly say that I didn't get to harvest any turnips that year.

Shield bug

Like the flea beetle, there's several species in the UK and one I come across most often is the Common Green. I must admit that the shield bug isn't a true beetle and good news for gardeners - the Common Green is not harmful to plants, despite feeding on plant sap. It does, however, have a trick up its sleeve. You may have heard an alternate name for this creature - stink bug! That's because if it's disturbed the shield bug omits a pungent smell from special glands so beware when you are near them.

Despite me handling this little chap, I didn't receive a dose of the smelly secretion but I have come across it on raspberries, which was an unpleasant surprise as the smell can taint crops!

Butterflies

Butterflies sadly seem to be having a hard time at the moment. Some are considered pests, such as the Cabbage White, while others rely on native species of plants for food, which some gardeners regard as weeds, so it isn't easy being a butterfly. The good news for butterflies in my garden is that I love them and will always keep a patch with wild flowers for caterpillars and when I grow brassicas I always leave one or two sacrificial plants for caterpillars too. I would also suggest adding in native plants such as nettles, ivy and hawthorn to provide food for several species.

Here's looking at you! I was lucky to get  a nice close up of this Cabbage White. Note the compound eyes.

The very striking Red Admiral butterfly, one of my personal faves, on my buddleia last year. It lays its eggs on nettles, as does the Peacock and Tortoiseshell.

Hoverflies

For an unknown reason ever since my childhood I have always loved hoverflies. They are a great sight to see for me and some species can be regarded as a gardener's friend owing to the fact that their larvae eat aphids. This time of the year you can see hoverflies hovering in areas of your garden - this their way of letting others know that this is their territory. They can be mistaken for wasps or bees because their bodies resemble them. There are some differences though to help you recognise them: bees have hairy bodies and antennae, whereas hoverflies don't have as much hair (some don't at all) and lack the antennae. There's also a difference between male and female hoverflies and it's all about the eyes. Females have smaller eyes than the males and if you are lucky enough to get a closer look you can see that the male's eyes are not only bigger but meet at the top of the head. The female's eyes are separated.  

This is a female hoverfly that was resting on one of my okra plants that I just repotted.

Here's a closer look at the female (I was so lucky she kept still long enough). Note that the eyes don't meet at the top of the head.

This one is a male by the look of it. Photographed at Kew last year.

This time of year you'll hear the unmistakable buzz of the bumblebee as they start to make more appearances. There's over 20 species of bumblebee in the UK, including those are not native (like the tree bumblebee that nested in one of our bird boxes a few years ago). They play an important part in pollinating our plants, so take care of them in your garden. They are even used in glasshouse crop production, where bumblebee nest boxes are brought from specialist companies to help with crops that need insect pollinators. 

The Garden Bumblebee on quince earlier this year.

I think this is the Common Carder Bee here in my garden. 

The Tree Bumblebee in one of our next boxes. Steve and I would enjoy an early evening glass of wine in the garden with the gentle hum of them buzzing.

Weevils

Where do I begin with weevils? There are so many species of them and they are often seen as the "bad guy" in gardens, mainly due to the Vine Weevil in the UK. Leaf damage is easily seen as you'll find notches on the edges of leaves but it's what goes on underground that causes damage which gardeners hate the weevil for. The vine weevil grub will live in soil, including in pots where it will feed on plant roots in autumn and winter, causing severe wilting or even death in plants. I have never used chemical treatment on vine weevils, instead opting to empty pots in spring and removing the grubs. Having said that I haven't had much of a problem with vine weevil. The weevil is a member of the beetle family and different species eat different plants and sadly most of them are considered as pests.

I found this weevil near my polytunnel last year. I don't know what species it is.

Vine Weevil grub found in one of my pots this year.

This Vine Weevil is going through metamorphosis.

I've only just mentioned a small amount of insects here. There's so many more and if I can find more and photograph them I'll write about them. I hope you enjoyed reading about these creatures. Now I'll have to get busy with gardening again! Until next time!

April so far

Well, the weather has been warm this month so far and it can only mean one thing for me - carry on gardening! I've been very busy with sowing both veg seeds and flower seeds in a bid to get as much in the garden as possible. The shelves in the polytunnel are heaving under the weight of so many trays and pots, but I've also been transplanting veg to my prepared beds outdoors now.

During lockdown my husband has also been very busy getting creative for wildlife. He's hidden away in the shed working on various projects, including a hedgehog house, bird table and a cover for the pond pump to place more plants on. I'm hoping he'll carry on producing more wonderful items.

The pond now has a much better look to it thanks to Steve.

So, back to the planting. I've finally put my potatoes in. This year I'm only growing a maincrop variety: Rooster. These were reasonably priced, from Wilkos. I can't remember the price but it was around the £2 mark. There were 20 in a pack, so I dug two trenches and placed 10 in each. I've left mounds of earth beside each trench so that I can continue to earth up the potatoes to get a good crop.

 I used an egg box or two to chit my potatoes in. These now had some good shoots and were ready to go in.

 To keep it as neat as possible, I used string to mark out straight trenches.

 Spacing out the potatoes to give each plant room to produce a good yield. I left a space of just over a foot between each potato.

The peas that the children had sown in to toilet rolls had germinated and some were growing quite a bit. In some cases the roots were already in view underneath so I took them outdoors and planted them in a prepared bed. Out of the seven varieties that were sown, all but one did very well. Unfortunately, the variety Kleine Rheinlanderin didn't germinate at all, so I won't be eating any of these in the summer.

With the help of my husband, the peas were placed in rows and covered with protective fleece. The fleece is there for two reasons: firstly the plants are still very young and I wanted them protected from any harsh frost and secondly young pea plants can be a tasty treat to pigeons, which there are a lot of in my garden! This crop probably won't make the kitchen once the peas are ready for picking as the family enjoy eating them straight off the plant. There's nothing quite like the taste of fresh peas and I can't wait!

You can't see the peas here but I assure you that they are very much there!

One plant that has probably felt a little forsaken in my garden is the humble strawberry. A small plant with delicious, very popular iconic fruit, which unfortunately didn't produce much (if any) strawberries for me last year. I'm guessing that it may have been the weather as I wasn't the only one. My local pick your own was often closed last year during season with a sign on the gates simply saying "closed due to lack of fruit", which was a huge disappointment for my children who both love picking fruit. I do hope that they didn't suffer too badly financially and that we'll see them open for a long season this year.

I cleaned up my own strawberry plants, removing any dead leaves and left the runners intact. These I then attached to pots with homemade metal pegs. They will remain attached to their parent plants until they successfully root into the pots, at which point I'll then cut them free from the parent plants and pot them on elsewhere. Just to give it a try I've also sown some strawberry seeds. Two varieties, one being an alpine strawberry. Alpine strawberries produce smaller fruit, which is still very tasty and are supposed to aid digestion. So far none have germinated, but it's early days so I'll  let you know how I got on.

For the runners, I just filled small pots (0.5ltr) with compost.

I used an old wire coat hanger (as I hate using them as hangers) to make my pegs.

Making the pegs wasn't easy and I must admit that Steve helped me with this bit!

The strawberry runner is now fastened down in the pot and should start to produce roots. Once the roots are there, the stem from the parent plant will be cut.

Other seedlings in the green house and polytunnel are various brassicas, tomatoes, beetroots, onions and lots of different flowers, including lavatera and nasturtium seedlings. I will write about these later on but finally I wanted to introduce you to Speckled Jim, a feral pigeon who has taken to visiting my garden since the centre of town no longer has people eating out due to the coronavirus. He's come out to where there is food and visits every morning and evening at 8.30am and 5.30pm on the dot. During the early evenings I sit with Jim to get him used to me. I think it's very important to get close to nature and although Jim is just a feral pigeon, it's so calming to sit with him and feed him. He's not the only one: we also have a resident hedgehog that my daughter feeds in long dry spells and yes, the hedgehog house that Steve built is for that little fellow. There is also frog spawn in the pond and it was delightful listening to the adult frogs sing, which I managed to get on film.

Now a regular visitor, Jim is always welcome.

There's still plenty of work to get done, so I'll be back very soon.