Drop the carpet-bombing of pests and plants for cheap and cheerful eco products
At least that’s what it feels like after all the rain and wind we have experienced this winter.
Of course, Irish weather and logic don’t make good bedfellows so we’ll have to accept whatever the climate gods throw at us.
The gardening year is beginning in earnest now as we are heading into March, many seeds have been sown indoors, lawns new and old will need attention soon, slugs, vine weevils and other pests will be wreaking havoc once more, and of course everyone will want more plants and colour in their outdoor space.
With that in mind I felt it would be a good idea to focus on some gardening items that I can’t do without.
Aerial layering
Aerial layering is a very effective way of propagating plants and is a particularly useful way to grow plants that are difficult to propagate in other ways, such as by cutting or seed.
The problem with this method up to now is that it has been tricky and cumbersome, involving making an incision on a plant stem and wrapping some damp compost around the cut with cling film and elastic bands.
It’s an old fashioned method and one that has always fascinated me, but because it’s so fiddly and tedious I have rarely grown anything in this way, I think I just about scraped a pass in my college assessment on the skill, a lifetime back.
Enter Liam O Meara, a clever-thinking, enterprising gardener in Galway.
Liam invented a product called the cutting globe which is a reusable plastic globe which you simply fill with compost and clip together around where you make the incision on the plant.
Large new plants with their own new root system can be cut from the parent plant within a matter of weeks, depending on the species.
It’s something that I have been using for the last few years and now quite simply can’t imagine being without at least one in my garden. Like all good inventions, it’s simple, effective and useful.
Safe slug slaying
The RHS in the UK last year published the top five most prevalent garden pests in UK gardens. No surprise that number one was slugs and snails and number two was vine weevil.
To the best of my knowledge, no similar survey has been done in Ireland but I suspect the results would be similar if not identical.
I would urge anyone to stop and think before going to the local garden centre to get the cheapest slug killer and the first vine weevil killer that they see.
The natural predators for slugs and snails are larger birds and hedgehogs. Many of the slug pellets that are available contain metaldehyde, a form of alcohol, and this is poisonous to birds and hedgehogs.
A bird even eating a dead snail that has ingested one of these pellets will most likely die.
There are many pellets now on the market containing ferric phosphate which is said to be totally safe to surrounding wildlife and pets.
The downside to these is that up to now they have been substantially more expensive than the alcohol-based pellets.
‘Growing Success’, a well-established brand of organic gardening products produce this type of slug pellet and they are now available through most garden centres at a price that compares with the metaldehyde equivalents.
The chemical control for vine weevil — that nasty little grub which munches away at the roots of so many plants, then turns into an adult beetles and feeds on the leaves — contains thiacloprid, a neonicotinoid.
The neonicotinoid group of chemicals has often been cited as damaging to the bee population.
I feel that using chemicals in our gardens, if not necessary, is just foolish in the extreme.
Supernemos, a formulation of beneficial nematodes is another Irish product and more effective in the control of vine weevils than any product I have ever used in the past.
Recent studies in Ireland and the UK have found supernemos to have a 90% kill rate with other products achieving a best of 70%. As if that wasn’t enough reason for me to use them, the formulation of nematodes targets all soil-borne insect pests.
Mossy days
Moss is a perennial problem for Irish lawns.
Now, even if you don’t aspire to have a perfect putting green outside your house, it is still important to control this moss as otherwise it will get a stranglehold on the lawn, leading to less air circulation and encouraging fungal problems and thatch.
Sulphate of iron and many proprietary lawn care products will kill the moss but the problem then, is that you are left with dead moss which will turn orange and then black, much more unsightly than green moss.
This will then need to be removed by scarifying or at least, a bit of back-breaking raking.
Mobactor is an organic lawn fertiliser from Viano in Belgium which not only feeds the lawn over a 12-week period, but also kills the moss and here’s the good bit: because it contains a species of the bacteria bacillus which is found naturally in the soil, it consumes material like thatch and moss when added to fertiliser.
The moss naturally breaks down, removing any need for raking or scarifying.
If you, like me, prefer to use products that won’t damage the environment and the birds and bees and which also mean less work, then consider the easy cheats above.
