Green tree frog in my frog friendly garden

During the last lot of rain I heard the calls of three different stripey marsh frogs around my garden!I also heard the deep calls of a green tree frog!

This is so exciting because it has been a few years since I heard our native frogs in my garden. Unfortunately the frogs had been driven out when cane toads overtook my garden. Cane toads out-compete our native frogs for food and they will even eat the frogs.

So why is it important to have a frog-friendly garden?

Frogs tell us so much about our environment. If you have frogs in your garden it means that the area is low in toxic chemicals.

Frogs absorb pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals through their skin and these chemicals kill them! So you won’t see or hear frogs if you or your neighbours use chemicals. This includes all manner of weed killers based on glyphosate, as well as lawn weed and feed products.

How to create a frog-friendly garden?

Pot of water chestnuts where the sedge frogs love to hide

Frog-friendly gardens are easy to create! The first step (and for some people the hardest) is to stop using nasty chemicals!

Then you need to create the perfect environment for the frogs. You can do this by adding a natural water pond or water feature. I use lots of pots for my frog ponds. You can fill them with plants such as water lilies, lotus, water irises and even edible plants such as water celery, watercress and water chestnuts.

Frogs also need places to hide from predators and to keep cool, so it’s important to leave plenty of mulch and leaf litter around. They also need some rocks or logs to sit on and sun themselves. My frogs love using garden statues that I’ve placed in the garden.

Next you need to eliminate cane toads.

These are an introduced pest that will out-compete your native frogs for food. They have even been known to eat native frogs!

Cane toads can be eliminated manually by collecting the frogs and placing them in the fridge until they go to sleep. You then move them into the freezer and from there out into the garbage on garbage night.

I use biodynamic peppers to control cane toads (Magical Biodynamics) . The peppers work on making my garden inhospitable to cane toads so they go elsewhere. This allows space for the frogs to move back in.

Create the perfect environment and the frogs will come! And you will have the joy of knowing that your garden is safe for frogs to live in. And that means that it’s safe for you and your family!

Your Edible Garden Guru

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I had a query recently asking what a white powdery substance was on a grape leaf? They actually said “it looks like powdery mildew, but it’s not on zucchini”! It looked like powdery mildew because it was powdery mildew.

It got me wondering “how many other gardeners consider powdery mildew a disease restricted to plants of the cucurbit family?”

Most gardeners will have struck powdery mildew on their cucurbits (i.e. cucumbers, cantaloupes, pumpkins etc). It shows up as a white or grey powder on the leaves. While it generally doesn’t kill your plant, it can significantly impact your crop as the plant can’t produce lots of fruit while its energy is being drained off and the plant is trying to fight the disease.

Powdery mildew actually affects a wide range of plants, not just zucchini, pumpkins and squash. It can affect both edible and ornamental plants. Edibles that can be affected include carrots, apples, grapes, tomatoes, eggplants, peas and beans and capsicum to name a few. Ornamentals can include chrysanthemums, gerberas, dahlias and roses. In fact it’s probably quicker to write a list of plants that aren’t affected!

So what is powdery mildew? Powdery mildew is a fungal infection. The fungal spores attach to the leaves of the plant where they drive filaments or threads into the leaf structure to draw the nutrients away from the plant. The fungi then develop fruiting spores which can be transmitted by wind or water splashes. The fungus thrives in warm, dry conditions and warm, humid conditions.

Powdery mildew is actually caused by a range of different fungi, some of which are specific to a species of plant while others can affect a whole host of plant species.

Prevention

There are several things the organic gardener can do to prevent powdery mildew in their garden:

• Grow the plants in the conditions they need to thrive. With veggies this means plenty of sunlight. Struggling and weak plants are more susceptible to attack.
• Don’t crowd your plants. Allow plenty of room for air circulation.
• Encourage beneficial insects. The orange/yellow lady beetle actually eats the fungus!
• Good hygiene is essential, as it is with all gardening tasks.
• Clean tools with a weak bleach or hydrogen peroxide solution between tasks,
• Remove infected plant material and put it in the bin.
• Do not compost as the spores will hibernate and can then infect other plants.
• Crop rotation assists by removing susceptible plants from the soil for several seasons.
• Don’t over-fertilise as lush new growth is more susceptible to the fungi
• Morning watering is best. Some say to not wet the leaves, although scientific evidence shows that water can interrupt the sporing cycle.

If you find that you continually battle with powdery mildew then you may need to investigate the range of crops that have been developed to be resistant to the fungus.

Lady beetle feasting on powdery mildew

Treatment

If you find that you have an attack of powdery mildew, there are several organic treatments. These include:

• Spraying with milk. This is the number one organic solution and, surprisingly, it works better than many commercial treatments. The standard spray is 1 part milk full-cream milk to 10 parts water, but I find a 25 percent solution works better. For severe infections you may need a 50 percent solution. Milk can also help to prevent infections if you spray your plants weekly;
• Spray with a sodium or potassium bicarbonate solution. I find you need to add a soap to help the bicarb adhere to the leaves;
• Spray with Neem oil. Again a small amount of soap or white oil will assist it to stick to the leaves;
• Dust with wettable sulphur or spray with lime sulphur;
• Use a commercial biofungicide.

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Ladybeetle lays eggs in your garden

So what do I mean by Good Bugs?

Good bugs are those insects that prey upon bad bugs in your garden. Bad bugs include caterpillars, scale, aphids and mealybugs.

There are plenty of beneficial bugs including lady beetles, lacewings and praying mantis. These good bugs also include the larvae of insects such as cryptolaemus, which is the larvae of ladybeetles.

Encouraging the Good Guys

When you encourage good bugs into your garden, your veggies grow bigger and better, and suffer fewer pest attacks. And you won’t need to use any pesticides to get rid of the bad pests!

In fact, you will have to stop using pesticides before these good guys will visit your veggie patch!

This is because pesticides kill the good guys just as quickly as they kill the bad guys!

My favourite Good guy is the larvae of Lady Beetles, also known as cryptolaemus or the Mealy Bug Killer! And they deserve this title as they eat dozens of mealybug each day!

I once watched a mealybug killer clean up an infestation of mealybug on my lime tree. I had a pretty bad infestation at the start, and by day 3 there were only a few shell corpses.

The Mealybug killer works by disguising itself to look just like its prey. In fact, the only way you can tell them apart, the mealybug killer moves on its own. This is an important distinction, as the mealybug itself has no legs and requires ants to move it around. Mealybugs live on your fruit trees and in your veggie garden!

So, if you see a mealybug that is walking, it really is a good guy – the mealybug killer!

Mealybug killer

You can purchase these good guys online, from places like Bugs for Bugs. However, I find it just as easy to encourage the good guys into your garden. You can do this by providing food for the good guys with plenty of flowers and nectar.

Providing a pesticide-free garden

You also need to provide a pesticide-free garden. When I talk about not using pesticides, this includes those pesticides that are sold as “natural” and “harmless” such as Pyrethrum.

These pesticides are considered “natural” as they have their genesis in nature. The chemicals in these pesticides have been extracted or copied from plants. However, they are made into a concentrate that is hundreds of times more poisonous than that found in plants!

And these pesticides kill all bugs, both the good guys and the bad guys. So instead of spraying your veggies with pesticides why not give nature a chance to use its own predators to kill the bad bugs in your garden?

When you do this you will notice that you have many more insects in your garden, but many of these will be good bugs.

So why not take a walk around your garden and look at all the abundant insect life? Many of these insects are helping you in your gardening endeavours https://www.thedelectablegarden.com.au/good-bugs/. They do this by pollinating your plants, but also by eating other bugs!

Until next time

Your Edible Garden Guru

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I raise this as many gardeners reach for chemical poisons to deal with insect and pest invasions. They do this without thinking these poisons also affect the native bees and honey bees!

Bees are in big trouble overseas. With hives collapsing due to the impact of pesticides and diseases on the worker bees, which leave the Queen bees and young bees without food.

Honey bee

At present, Australia is almost completely clear of the Varroa mite and other parasites and diseases.

And, we also have a lot of native bees. These include the native stingless bees, which are the only native hive bees we have.

There are also a lot of solitary bees that pollenate our flowers. This produces the fruits and vegetables we eat. And therefore we benefit!

Without bees, we would have very little food!

It has been estimated that Bees pollinate around 90 percent of the food crop species that we eat. When bees pollinate fruits and vegetables, this enables them to produce seeds. This then ensures new plants can grow.

So, we would lose all those plants that bees pollinate. And it isn’t just fruits and vegetables that would be affected!

We would also the lose all of the animals that eat those plants. Including us humans!

Enough about the bad news!

Blue Banded Bee

As I said previously, in Australia we have around 1500 species of native bees. And you can encourage these bees into your garden!

All they need is a pesticide-free garden and a source of food.

Native bees love pollinating any types of flowers. They love pollinating your fruits and vegetables. Also, they love pollinating all our native plants.

Worried about being stung?

Native bee feeding (this is greatly magnified!)

Many of the solitary native bees are capable of stinging you. I have lots of the solitary native bees, including Blue-banded bees and Carpenter bees. However, they seem to avoid contact with humans and everything I have read says that they are a lot more laid-back than honey bees! This is good news as the Carpenter bee is around 2.5cm big. I would imagine it would pack quite a punch if it stung you!

I also have a lot of the native hive bees in my garden. These are known as stingless bees, because they don’t sting! They can bite you if you invade their hive but they can’t inject a poison!

This was one of the first things that attracted me to the native bees. I am allergic to bee stings! But several plants in my garden were not being pollinated so I knew that I needed to attract more bees!

When I heard about native bees that didn’t sting I thought “I must get some of those!”

And my garden has never looked back! So I now have two native bee hives.

All my fruit trees and my vegetables get pollinated. In fact I regularly let vegetables and herbs like lettuce, bok choy and coriander go to seed. This ensures the bees have plenty of food. It also means that I get lots of free seeds and seedlings.

So why not plant some fruits and vegetables to help encourage native bees into your garden!

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, Your Personal Gardening Expert

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Good Bugs for the Vegetable Garden

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The post Native Bees and Backyard Buddy’s for Your Garden appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Hoverfly

I raise this as many gardeners reach for chemical poisons to deal with insect and pest invasions. They do this without thinking these poisons also affect the good bugs!

This was demonstrated following the decision by the Big Green shed, and other stores, to cease selling some systemic insecticides. These insecticides include Confidor and Bug Killa. Many gardeners queried the decision. As a result they wanted to know what would be provided as an alternative!

The reason that poisons like Confidor and Bug Killa are no longer being sold was precisely due to their impact on good bugs.

These insecticides contain a class of poison know as neonicotinoids. Neonicotinoids have been strongly implicated in the death of bees. And in aiding the collapse of bee hives in Europe and the UK.

The ban also applies to other products such as Conguard and Lawn bug killer, which also contain neonicotinoids. Surprisingly, Advantage/Advocate, used to kill for tick protection on your pets also contain neonicotinoids!

So what are good bugs and why do we need them?

Bee pollinating

Good bugs include a range of insects that actually benefit plants and therefore we humans also benefit!

Good bugs include bees and other beneficial insects, including dragonflies and hoverflies. They help us because they pollinate flowers, which produces fruits and vegetables.

They also help by killing and controlling some of the bad bugs that infect our plants. Without good bugs, we would have no food!

The problem with random use, and overuse of insecticides is that there is a knock-on effect.

These insecticides also poison frogs, lizards and skinks, and even birds which feed on the poisoned insects.

Speaking about alternatives!

When you speak to gardeners about alternatives, like letting nature do the work with good bugs, you often get a blank stare. If you are lucky you will get questions like “There are good insects?”. Or “How long will that take?”.

Try and get the gardeners to explain what the actual problem is that they have been using the pesticide to treat, often it has been a case of mis-diagnosis! People have been spraying neonicotinoids to deal with fungal diseases and even with things that show that a plant is healthy!

We have been trained to want a quick fix, without understanding what it is that we are fixing! Results with a simple spray of a poison!

But do people realise that they are potentially poisoning themselves and their families?

The manufacturers and suppliers maintain that when these poisons are used correctly there are minimal adverse impacts.

However, they have no control over how the general public use these chemicals!

I have been told about gardeners who sprayed neonicotinoid poisons every weekend as a prevention against insect attack!! Sadly they could not understand that they were also preventing their crops from being pollinated!

I hope the insect world has enough intelligence to declare these gardens a “No fly zone”.

Let us know what you think about the use of insecticides like neonicotinoids and the decision to cease selling these products.

Happy gardening

Rohanne, Your Personal Garden Expert

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How to deal with Common Destructive Pests in the Garden

http://www.thedelectablegarden.com.au/beneficial-insects-and-your-veggie-garden/

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Pests on plant

Normally this request is also accompanied by a desire for it to be in a single application as “I don’t have time to be spraying these insects or weeds regularly”!

Many people don’t seem to understand that for a poison or pesticide or weedicide to work as instantly and effectively as they have requested, it is usually a strong poison.

Poison

By definition, this means that it is not going to be safe for their children, pets or even for themselves!

Sure we may require a bigger dose of the poison to kills us than that which we use to kill the insects. But instant death may not be the only outcome!

Many of these chemicals, like the glyphosates used to kill weeds are now being shown to cause cancers in humans.

Poison

And yet people continue to want to poison themselves and the earth! Just to get rid of an insect that might even be doing good!

This week I spoke to a gardener who was trying to eradicate the microwasps hovering above their lawns. They were sure that these wasps were the reason for their dead lawn. In fact, the wasps were busily killing the lawn grubs that had caused the damage! Although I treid to explain this, the person still wanted to poison the wasps!

Praying Mantis egg sack

As you can probably guess, the answer to the question of whether I can recommend a strong poison that is safe is always NO! I cannot recommend a strong poison that will kill insects and weeds and not have the potential to affect children or pets.

In fact, as many of my regular readers will know, I am a big fan of helping mother nature do the job of sorting out troublesome pests in my garden. I have found that she often has a safe and effective solution that does not require me to spray any insects or use any poisons.

Not only that, by not spraying I have been happy to welcome natural pest killers into my garden. Like the praying mantis egg sack above and the green frog below in my garden!

Green tree frog

Happy gardening

Rohanne, Your Edible Garden Guru

The post What is a safe garden poison? appeared first on Delectable Garden.

Meaning of flowers? We all know that different flowers have different meanings. During Victorian times a couple could communicate with each other just by the flowers they chose to give each other. It was like a secret message and part of the whole courtship routine.

For example, red roses mean true love, while magnolias represent nobility and lily of the valley mean a return to love after difficulties in a relationship.

Mr Lincoln Red rose

While I love that flowers have different meaning. Instead of textbook meanings, I prefer to use flowers to remind me of people who have been in my life. I also use them to remind me of my past and places that I have visited or even places I have lived.

I love dark red, perfumed roses as these were my Dad’s favourite flower.

Likewise, I always have a Cecile Brunner rose in every garden I have ever planted, from the cold climate gardens to the tropics. This is because we had an arbour of Cecile Brunner roses in my first ever garden when I was growing up.

In this light, I have really enjoyed the beautiful flowers of the penstemon in my garden this year. The penstemon reminds me of a lovely neighbour, Monica who I lived next door to in Canberra and who first introduced me to this hardy, underutilised cottage garden plant.

Penstamon

I have several in my current garden (see photo) and they bloom almost constantly from spring to autumn.

Although not part of the edible garden, they are great for attracting bees.  They also provide food for bees, hoverflies and other beneficial insects.

Happy gardening

Rohanne, your Personal Garden Expert

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The post The Meaning of Flowers and Plants appeared first on Delectable Garden.

I was recently asked whether the compost worms in your compost bin are the same as earthworms.

Earthworm

The person in question had just started a garden, and the soil in the area was very poor. This meant that it was totally lacking organic matter or any earthworms. As a result, they were planning on buying some compost worms to add to the soil.

Luckily they asked whether compost worms could be added to their garden, as they would have spent quite a bit of money to no effect.

There are nearly 3,000 different types of earthworms. Worms can range in size from microscopic to several metres in lenth.

All  worms like to live where there is a good supply of food, moisture, oxygen and a favorable temperature.

Compost worms

The main difference between garden worms and compost worms is that compost worms like living near the surface. This means they will eat all the new material, including the kitchen scraps that you add to the compost bin.

Garden worms on the other hand like to burrow away from the surface. This means that they are not so good at eating all the new foods that you want to add to your compost bin each day.

For this reason, the worms that you want in your compost bin are a very specific type of earthworm.

The most common worms used in your compost are tiger or red wiggler worms. These are generally quite small in size, growing to about 4 cm long and very thin.

Compost worms love most foods. They can be a bit fussy about too much citrus or onion skins, but this is mostly because these foods can change the acidity of the compost.

In contrast to their size, you would not believe how much they eat!

They can eat their own weight in foodscraps every day!

The post The Difference between Compost Worms and Earthworms appeared first on Delectable Garden.

When I was growing up I had a fairly acute case of arachnophobia. If I saw a spider, my first instinct was to run away screaming and my second instinct was to kill it!

I don’t know when it finally dawned on me that, with a few exceptions like funnel webs, these poor creatures didn’t mean me any harm.

In fact, like many insects they can be a gardeners friend.

I now encourage spiders, especially the Golden Orb spiders to spin their webs in my garden. They do a fabulous job trapping mosquitoes, white cabbage moths and grasshoppers. And they help keep the garden in balance naturally.

Golden Orb in the Garden

The interesting thing that I have learned about this is how many people suffer from my previous fear of spiders! Even big burly tradesmen who come to the yard to do some work will ask if I can remove all the Golden Orb spiders and  spider webs before they start work!

The other morning I happened upon a Golden Orb that was happily spinning a grasshopper into a cocoon for later consumption so I took a photo.

I hope you can appreciate it, even if you suffer from a fear of spiders!

Happy gardening 🙂

Rohanne, your Personal Gardening Expert

 

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