urban vegetable patch

In our alphabetical series of posts about various aspects of vegetable gardening, I thought B might be for bugs in the Vegetable Garden. But not the bad ones… lets look at a double B – Beneficial Bugs!

Bad bugs get loads of press, so I thought by looking at the good bugs, it may give you some ideas on controlling those bad, nasty and destructive bugs that can seemingly devour a vegetable garden overnight!

Ladybugs

There are good ladybugs and bad lady bugs, so how do you know which is which? Well its all in the spots!

The 28 spot ladybug is bad, but before you go squashing it make sure that it is destructive, if your vegies aren’t under threat maybe leave it be. But if you find an 18 spot ladybug, you should be delighted, these are the good ones. They will happily munch away on thrips, aphids, grubs and a few other nasty bugs.

Not only that they are quite an attractive little bug to have hanging about your vegie garden. Kids love them!

Lacewing

These are a green bug with 4 clear wings hence their name lacewings. And its the hungry little larvae of the lacewings that are predators. They devour pests such as scales and mealybugs, aphids, moth eggs and smaller caterpillars. I read somewhere that they can eat approx 60 aphids in an hour, now that’s an appetite!.

Spiders

While you may sometimes despair when you get tangled up in a web in the garden and then do the crazy “I just ran into a spiderweb” dance. Spiders are your friends, they eat various bugs and while you need to be wary of them eg redbacks, white tails and funnel webs just to name a few… they can be particularly handy.

There are a number of other very handy bugs that can take out the nasty ones, these also include wasps (citrus gall wasp is great for citrus trees), some bugs such as the Damsel Bug, Predatory Shield bug and this one sounds good… the Assassin Bug!

So how do you get these beneficial insects into your garden?

Attract these beneficial insects into your garden by planting a few attractive plants such as sunflowers, daisy’s, borage, parsley, rosemary,coriander and native plants, just to name a few.

You may decide if your infestation is bad, to buy some beneficial bugs. There a number of suppliers in Australia that sell these beneficial insects and a couple that I have found that sell via the Internet are: Bugs for Bugs – www.bugsforbugs.com.au & IPM Technologies – http://www.ipmtechnologies.com.au

If you are interested in finding out more about beneficial bugs, take a look at this newly released book – Bug: The Ultimate Gardener’s Guide to Organic Pest Control

Well, it wasnt snow, cotton wool or a spiders web.

So what was it?

This was the big question facing vegie patch owners Fiona and Peter and their family.

The even bigger question was, “is it bad”?

Having just recently planted their vegie garden they began to wonder what they had done to cause such a problem.

So after a couple of photos, they began to surf the net for an answer and after just a short while, they found the answer.

And it was all good news, they had done nothing wrong and the white stuff was in fact a fungus, but a good sort of one. Saprotrophic Fungi.

According to the Fungi section of the CSIRO – Saprotrophic fungi (also known as saprobes, saprophytes) obtain their energy and nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter such as in soil, litter, dung, and wood.

And for a bit more info a search of www.environment.gov.au came up with this info: Saprotrophic fungi obtain their nutrients from dead organic matter. There are many forms of dead organic matter—leaf litter, dung, soil, dead animals, wood and dead fungi-to name just a few. Saprotrophic fungi use them all. Saprotrophic fungi feed on and recycle about 85% of the carbon from dead organic matter, with bacteria and animals responsible for the other 15%. These fungi release the locked-up nutrients that can then be used by other living organisms, making the fungi vital to the health of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

The original answer that gave way to further investigation came from Wiki Answers: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_remove_mold_from_the_dirt_in_your_garden

The cause may have been due to the fact that the weather had been quite warm and all of a sudden the garden owners received almost 100mm of rain in just a couple of days, and with the weather still being warm, decomposition of the organic matter may have been quicker than usual for that area of Australia.

But whatever the cause, we found it fascinating to look at and we learnt something ourselves.

If you have come across a problem in your garden and then solved, it feel free to share it with us and the readers of the Urban Vegetable Patch.