Grow healthy plants and harness nature’s help
I always celebrate the biodiversity of our garden, but this joyous acceptance of all creatures great and small has been tested to its limits of late.
After a fierce late winter storm I lifted a drain cover to check for debris and discovered an almighty clutch or snails clustered round the edge like carbuncles.
I said a rude word and relocated the critters in a field over the road, but the sight of so many snails in one place is a warning, perhaps, of how our gardening year is going to go.
The tilting climate is often proving beneficial to potential pests, enabling more overwintering, breeding and the potential for problems especially when plants have been weaken by extreme weather events.
But forewarned is forearmed, and the organic gardener has several useful tricks up their sleeve, starting at the most basic level of buying and raising healthy, robust plants.
Give them plenty of room to grow so they are not competing for light, water and food, and check them regularly so you spot single pests, or small colonies, that you can deal with before they become an infestation.
Tender young shoots will be a magnet for aphids and it’s very satisfying to wipe them off with a (gloved) finger and thumb, or pinch off an aphidy leaf and add it to the bird table.
Beer traps/slug pubs are effective, as are wool pellets and anything gritty scattered around plants to keep slugs at bay. A layer of gravel at the base of a cold frame will also keep cuttings and seedlings safe.
One of the most effective ways of controlling pests is to enlist the power of nature. Welcome garden birds, hedgehogs, amphibians and predatory insects into your garden and they will be only too happy to reduce your pest numbers.
It may not be pretty – the sight of parasitic wasp larvae erupting from a caterpillar body is not for the faint-hearted, but it is very satisfying knowing that you are in turn helping all levels of nature’s food pyramid to thrive and survive.
Beware the month’s winds
Secure your trees, shrub and climbers
1. One of the Old English words for March is ‘hyldmonath’, or ‘loud/windy month’, so make sure all your supports for trees, shrubs and climbers are secure and up to the job. This is especially important for newly planted trees that bear the brunt of the month’s storminess.
2. Don’t forget to tie in the growing shoots of climbers, roses and vines so they grow in the direction you want them to grow, and are safe from being battered and broken by the wind (and also less likely to cause injury when whipping around in gusty weather).
Enjoying the fruits of a surprise fee plant
I love a free plant, especially when it is an unexpected gift from the garden, so I was over the moon about a surprise discovery I made last week.
I was belatedly clearing away the last of 2024’s growbags from the base of a trellis that is mainly used to support an enthusiastic tayberry.
As I was going along, tying in the new berry shoots, I noticed a thick skein of white roots reaching out underneath one of the growbags as I moved it to empty on a border as a basic soil-conditioning mulch.
A tayberry shoot had taken root, so instead of adding it to the compost I cut it free and potted it up and will see how it grows. We have a gap along the fence where our raspberries grow, and I’m hoping this will prove to be the perfect filler.
As a thank you, I fed, watered and mulched the original tayberry in anticipation of a generous crop of those delicious sweetly tart fruits later this summer.
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