Good Bugs

TheGardenWhisperer · Nov 19, 2007 11:05 pm

A great way to treat most common pest problems in the home garden is by useing something called intergrated pest management (IPM).

This is pretty much about useing natural preditors to combat the bad bug wrecking your plants.

for example, Aphids. Aphids are little black, green, brown, beige, you nae it colour (mostly green

) bugs that are often found on roses feeding from the sap.

traditionally we might grab some omethoate (rogor) or confidor and spray them and that makes the sap poisionous and they feed on it and it rots there little guts out and kills them.

Lady birds are a natural preditor to them (as are hoverflys) and you can buy lady bird houses to breed them in. you can also mail order the right natural preditor to your door and after their release your aphid problems vanish

I know of a few nurseries using this and they have better plants and save a fortune on insecticides and insurance premiums by using IPM.

here is a few common things we encounter in the garden
http://goodbugs.org.au/natenemieslist.htm

hope this helps some one

there are better ways we can treat pests in the garden

TheGardenWhisperer · Nov 19, 2007 11:10 pm

i might ad that peole often reach for the pyrethrum to spray on the roses and kill off aphids. this does come from a natural source but this doesn't mean that it is non toxic. It should be treated as any other insecticide and more often than not you will kill more good things than bad things such as lady birds and bees. every bee that visits your rose will be feeling not cool after it and more often than not, die.

Pyrethrum is also the very basis for heap of synthetic insectides that copy pyrethrum. these can be found in fly sprays and ant killers.

vpande · Nov 20, 2007 2:16 pm

Thanks for the informative link. whats the best for cabbage moths?
I grow vegies the organic way and cabbage moths are the biggest menace.
looking forward to your advice

Michelle · Nov 20, 2007 2:23 pm

This also is a good link for natural pest control

http://www.figtree.org.au/natural_pest_control.html

TheGardenWhisperer · Nov 20, 2007 9:43 pm

for cabbage moths (which would be driving you crazy right now) Inormally suggest Yates Success. it is more effective than "Di-Pel". It uses a bacteria that attacks the grubs little body. The bacteria is harmless to the rest of the food chain.

it was discovered by a yates fella on holidays to the Carribean (spell?) and he visited an old bourbon distillery and noticed no insects at all. just quiet. Which is not normal in the tropics. A sample of the soil from there was studied and they discovered the bacteria.

You can spray your veggies etc and not have to follow any withholding period. (that's what a product will say is the time span before it is safe to eat something after spraying).

TheGardenWhisperer · Nov 20, 2007 9:48 pm

for a treatment for cabbage moths using Intergrated Pest Management you can be sent a parasytic insect that will sort the cabbage moth well and truely. Usually tiny harmless (to us) wasps will lay their eggs into a grub or egg and control them that way.
A bit grusome really but it works