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Thursday, January 02, 2014

The One that Bugs Me the Most

Thursday, January 02, 2014   Mark and Gaz   19 comments
Do you have a gardening ritual or routine that, if you're not able to do it ends up bothering you, niggling at you until the day that you're finally able to do it?

I'm not usually a worry wart. After all, it's the new year and all worries should have been left away with the passing of the old year. Good way of thinking but it's more applicable in theory than in practice!

We have a ritual that we weren't able to do last autumn as, you've guessed it right, we were crazy busy and it's a ritual we haven't skipped until recently. That ritual is drenching our garden and most importantly potted plants with anti vine weevil nematodes. I've written about this biological pest control before and it's something we religiously do in the spring and autumn but that ritual was just broken.

Since then and now that things are a bit calmer I have been worrying a little yet often enough, thinking that there may be grubs in some of those pots, slowly gnawing away on roots and potentially giving us nasty surprises in the spring. Hopefully that won't be the case! If the weather continues to be mild I will drench the pots in the greenhouse with chemical control soon (biological control is temperature dependent), in case there are larvae there that are currently active as it's extra warm in there (they don't go dormant if it's warm enough). That should give us some peace of mind! But as soon as it warms up in the spring, warm enough for the nematodes to be effective we'll be out there drenching away. Any larvae that may be present in the soil or in the pots will hopefully be killed and controlled early enough before they do any significant damage.

Plants are like pets aren't they? If you like them you also end up worrying about them!
 Posted in: exotic blog , nematodes , pests , vine weevil
Location: Alternative Eden, Finsbury Road, Luton LU4 9AH, UK

