Learn to Garden — Gardening with Casey Joy

Hello and welcome back to another instalment of ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Aphid’. Which I’m now realising way too late is an infinitely better title than How to Make Friends with Your Pests.

Ah well. You live and you learn.

And one thing that I have learned in relation to pests is that far too often our attitude towards garden critters is black and white and devoid of nuance. In Part 1 (which you can read here) I explained how natural systems are complex and interconnected and how, because of this, our traditional methods of ‘pest’ control usually do more harm than good. We then met three of the garden’s most reviled characters: The ant, the snail and the slug. I do hope I helped you to love them a little more than before.

I also have to admit that ever since writing part 1 I have increasingly found myself outside on all fours peering at the grass looking for ants. For the most part, they’ve eluded me. What I’ve found instead are skinks lazing in the sunshine, slaters scuttling through lupin mulch and ladybirds learning to love each other rather …enthusiastically (below).

All of this has led me to the conclusion that the creatures in my garden have found their way to a really peaceful equilibrium, where nothing (save a few aphids) has reproduced out of control. Which makes me even more convinced that encouraging biodiversity in our gardens is THE best way we can possibly safeguard our crops, feed the birds and generally make our backyards infinitely more interesting and vital places.

With that said, here are a few more garden ‘bad guys’ who absolutely deserve a second chance. Allow them into your patch, nurture their predators and watch as The Greatest Show on Earth plays itself out atop your pansies, beside your marigolds and underneath your pumpkins.

Friend #3: The Caterpillar

Isn’t it peculiar that we can love or loathe an animal based solely on where it’s at in its life cycle? That, pre-metamorphosis, we’ll busily pluck them from the undersides of our broccoli leaves, plunge them in soapy water, toss them over garden walls and spray them with insecticides, only to call them beautiful and mesmerising once they’ve shed their cocoons and taken flight. That we buy caterpillar sprays from the same garden centres that sell us butterfly attracting plants? And yes, I know that monarch butterflies and cabbage moths are two entirely different species with different feeding habits and very different appearances. But whether or not we find them ‘beautiful’ and worthy of protecting is nothing more than a matter of opinion. I think it’s worth deciding to love them all.

Caterpillars do nibble our plants, sure (many particularly enjoy members of the brassica family - broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbages, kale, etc.). But this stage is temporary, and once they’ve eaten their fill and built their cocoon they undergo one of the most incredible transformations of any animal on this planet. A caterpillar essentially digests itself, releasing enzymes that dissolve its tissues, turning it into caterpillar mush with only a few groups of cells retaining any kind of organised structure. These structured groups of cells (called ‘imaginal discs’) then feast on the soupy caterpillar gravy that surrounds them, in order to turn into all the body parts that make up a butterfly. If we didn’t see it happening in the natural world we would think it was part of the plot line from an Alien movie.

Once the metamorphosis is complete, we are rewarded with a creature that is not only beautiful, but also brings a lot of benefits to our gardens.

Butterflies and moths - like bees and flies - are pollinators, attracted to brightly coloured and nectar-rich flowers. Just like bees and flies, butterflies will help to pollinate the plants in your garden, increasing your harvest and enabling you to collect viable seeds for next year.
In fact, in the evening it is the moths that take over the role of primary pollinators in your garden. Certain flowers that only open at dusk (like Moonflowers) have evolved heady, beautiful fragrances that are thrown into the still evening air specifically to attract the moths that pollinate them. Other flowers pollinated by moths include Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis), night-blooming jasmine (Cestrum nocturnum), Gardenias, and many others. Often these flowers are white (they reflect the glow of the moon, making them easier to see), but moths have also been found to visit flowering clovers, legumes and other crops, acting as a support system for the daytime pollinators.

While our appreciation of daytime pollinators has grown in the last few decades, nighttime pollinators are often overlooked, which is a real shame because their numbers are also declining (read more here).

Butterflies, moths and caterpillars are also an important low-level pillar of your garden food-chain. A lot of things like to eat them, including birds, spiders and lizards. Often, simply making your garden more attractive to birds (by adding bird baths, shrubby trees and plants that produce nectar-rich flowers) will keep caterpillar populations in balance. As with the other ‘pests’ we’ve befriended so far, an overpopulation of caterpillars is usually a sign that something else in your garden is out of whack, rather than a problem you need to combat with sprays and poisons.

In fact, the very presence of caterpillars, moths and butterflies in your garden can be an indicator of good garden health. Gardens that are hospitable to caterpillars, moths and butterflies are usually home to a wide variety of other beneficial insects and birdlife as well.

I’ve seen the value of this kind of diversity in my own garden, which is filled with white cabbage moths every spring. I’ve always found them too beautiful to even contemplate trying to kill them. But it wasn’t until last year, when a family of willy wagtails spent all summer raising and feeding chicks in my backyard, that I fully appreciated the benefits of allowing all insects into the garden. These caterpillars (and the cabbage moths that they eventually became) were plucked off leaves and snatched out of the air by the wagtails in order to feed their chicks. At best, using sprays in our gardens deprives birds like these of a tasty meal. At worst, poisoned bugs can be fed to hungry chicks, making them sick or even killing them.

Every action we take in our gardens has an impact downstream. We can’t simply eradicate a whole species of ‘pest’ and expect nothing else to change. If we just change our perspectives instead, we can learn to see the entire ecosystem as a thing of complexity and beauty. Next time you find leaves that have been munched by a caterpillar, think ahead to sun drenched days of moths and butterflies tumbling through your garden air like multicoloured confetti, pollinating the plants and feeding the birds.

If you’d like to make your garden more hospitable to caterpillars and butterflies, there are some good suggestions here.

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Friend #4: The Aphid

Aphids! I bloody love ‘em (also, FYI so does British gardening icon and my personal hero, Monty Don). But, I didn’t always feel this way, which gives me great hope that I’ll be able to convince you to love them too. Once upon a time I would have seen a plant covered in aphids (like my Milkweed, below) and assumed a terrible plague had befallen my garden. Now I see it as a sign that my garden is healthy enough to provide a tasty meal for a whole host of beneficial insects!

I must admit that aphids don’t do anything to improve our soil, and truth be told, they’re not very good for the plants they infest (although for a healthy plant, they’re no more annoying than a few niggling mosquitos). But aphids have one, massive, beneficial role to play:

Aphids are wonderfully good for fostering a diverse garden ecosystem, because basically everything wants to eat them!
Ladybirds, lacewings, praying mantises, damsel bugs, spiders and wasps all prey on aphids, and allowing aphids to live on your plants undisturbed is the perfect way to encourage these beneficial insects to visit your garden.

What’s more, spraying the aphids in your garden is a surefire way to send their predators scuttling for greener pastures. If there’s nothing for them to eat, ladybirds, lacewings and all the rest aren’t going to stay in your garden. This means that the next time you get a plague of aphids there will be nothing there to control them. If, instead, you let nature take its course, your garden will become a permanent home to a wide variety of beneficial insects that will keep your aphids (and many other critters) in check.

One important thing to remember about aphids is that the are quick reproducers. So it’s possible for plants to become infested in the blink of an eye. If this happens in your garden try not to freak out. If an aphid population rapidly exceeds the feeding capacity of a plant, the aphids will simply develop wings and fly off to find another food source. For most healthy plants, it’s quite unlikely that a temporary plague of aphids will do lasting damage.

Over the last week, I’ve watched aphids semi-decimate a bunch of milkweed plants (these self-seed readily in my garden and so I’m not particularly precious about them). Instead of worrying about the aphids, I waited with baited breath and within a few days the milkweed was covered with ladybird larvae, chowing down on the aphids! It was one of the most rewarding and exciting things to watch! I have always wanted to have a garden full of ladybirds, and I owe a debt of gratitude to the sticky, crawling, ever-so-slightly disgusting critters that attracted them to my backyard!

Ladybird larvae!!! Oh be still my beating heart.

Friend #5: The Grasshopper

Much like our slug and snail friends from Part 1, grasshoppers are manure machines!

While their droppings are - admittedly - significantly smaller than those of the cow, sheep or pig, grasshoppers still give back to the garden by helping to fertilise the soil. In fact, this study found grasshopper manure to contain levels of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphorous comparable to those found in commonly used animal manures (to learn more about how different animal manures feed your garden, check out this blog post all about manure.
And, like most of the other ‘pests’ discussed here, grasshoppers provide a valuable food source for birds, lizards, frogs, small mammals and even some predatory insects.

That said, dear reader, I appreciate that you may still be struggling to view grasshoppers in a favourable light. They have voracious appetites and can chow through a crop in next to no time. Perhaps your most recent leafy casualty was a little too recent for you to forgive and forget. If you routinely have large quantities of grasshoppers in your patch, there are a few (entirely spray free) things you can do.

First, encourage birds into your garden. Birds are your BIGGEST asset in bringing grasshopper populations back into balance. Get yourself at least one birdbath, grow plants with nectar-rich flowers, especially natives, and create a sheltered backyard with plenty of shrubs to provide protection. Also, try just putting up with the grasshoppers for a while. As you add bird-attracting plants and other features to your garden the grasshoppers may just help seal the deal, convincing the birds that yours is definitely a garden worth visiting.
Along with the birds, make your garden more hospitable to other animals that prey on grasshoppers. You can find some great tips for encouraging lizards to your garden here, and if you have the space you could even try building a pond or a ‘frog bog’.
Last, you can grow plants that grasshoppers tend not to like. These plants include highly scented herbs like common sage, wormwood (Artemisia), salvia and coriander, as well as calendula (Calendula officinalis), Chinese brake fern (Pteris vittata), Horehound (Marrubium vulgare; which belongs to the mint family) and veggies like tomatoes, squash, garlic and peas. Be warned, this method is not fool-proof (hungry grasshoppers are not as discriminating and may be tempted to eat even the most pungent of plants), but it is worth a shot in addition to the other recommendations.

Friend #6: The Slater

And finally, one more friendly garden decomposer: the Slater. Slaters are land-dwelling crustaceans!

Like our other garden friends that feed on decaying organic matter, slaters play an important role in the garden, breaking down dead plants and recycling the nutrients that were contained within them. This improves the health of your soil and helps keep your garden generally tidy.

The thing about slaters is they’re so bloody well-meaning. They don’t want to upset us; their preference is for plants that are already dead. That said, if your slaters have got a little overzealous and started eating your broccoli seedlings, the solution is not to kill them but to work with them. Here’s how:

Slaters don’t tend to attack healthy plants. If you have an established plant that they’ve started to munch on, it’s usually a sign that the plant is stressed (not getting enough nutrients or water) and is already showing signs of decay or damage that the slaters can detect. Keep your plants healthy and slaters will be less attracted to them.
Slaters tend to leave seedlings alone once they’ve reached a certain size. Bigger, older seedlings have stronger, tougher stems and are less appealing to slaters. So, the best thing to do is protect your seedlings while they’re still little. Try potting them on into larger pots to give them more time to grow before you plant them out in the garden. Another option is to plant them in your garden with protective surrounds (like a plastic milk carton cut into a tube, or a plant pot with the bottom cut out) that provide a barrier so the slaters can’t get to them.
Slaters like mulch. They live in it, they eat it, they want to be near it and they’ll probably try to eat whatever you plant in it. So, protect your young seedlings by keeping them away from heavily mulched areas. Note: I definitely don’t recommend abandoning mulch entirely (it’s way too good for your soil!), but I’ve found it helps to mulch more thinly (or not at all) in winter, to avoid slaters getting out of control in the garden beds (then plenty of good mulch through spring, summer and autumn).

A little note about all the other friends you haven’t met yet…

In this two part series we have covered 6 of the major players in the Misunderstood Critters Olympics. But just because this article is ending, please don’t let your fascination with your garden friends stop here, and don’t assume that every creature not on this list is unworthy of your friendship.

Aside from introduced and invasive species, every other animal in your garden has spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving to earn its place and a right to stay. The ant is as important as the earthworm. The moth is as beautiful as the butterfly. The aphid is as vital as the slug. The moment we stop viewing these animals as friend or foe, and instead see them as tiny, interesting agents with their own abilities and proclivities, is the moment we allow our gardens to provide us with a whole new level of meaning, value and companionship.

Make friends with the pests in your garden, and you’ll never garden alone.