There are just so many things I could have include here; black birds, potato beetles, the citrus gall wasp that is attacking my potted citrus, some seed’s poor germination rates, cabbage white butterflies, powdery mildew and so on but in the end I chose the 5 below. What they have in common is that I feel relatively powerless in the face of their attacks. Yes there are ways of working around them but frankly I simply wish they didn’t exist and then I could happily garden away feeling that absolutely no problem was insurmountable.
1. Slugs & Snails – I know how to deal with slugs and snails. I check under every pot weekly. I put in my beer traps. I used to put down bait – in a time before small children roamed my patch. I get rid of a lot of slugs and snails…but then I become complacent and no sooner than you’ve said newly planted pea seedlings they are levelled and you are left pealess for another year. Arrrgh!
2. Aphids – Normal aphids I don’t have any great problem with. Ants farm them on my tamarillo occasionally, I see the occasional outbreak on the leaves of my Tuscan Kale (there were more on the pic above but I squished them pre photo), but neither of these are a big deal. What I really dislike is when aphids lodge themselves in broccoli heads, so that no matter how much you wash that broccoli you just know you’re going to end up eating some. Urrrgh! The other aphid problem I have is with the black ones that attack my alliums. First it was the garlic and recently it has been the garlic chives. I’ve tried squashing them, I’ve tried spraying pyrethrum and both have kept them at bay for the briefest of brief periods. I have absolutely no idea what to try next.
3. Rodents – Now my problems with rodents are nothing like Michelle’s at Seed to Table, but I’m still not comfortable with the tell tale teeth marks they leave on the broccoli stalks, the nibbled radishes and carrots, the digging up and under the compost bin and the piles of poo they leave about the place. Icckky and nothing seems to keep them away. We’ve tried and failed with traps and we can’t bait because of the kids. I come from a long line of cat haters and whilst I don’t share their anti cat passions I don’t want one either – I would be too distressed when if instead of rodents it brought me one of the white checked honeyeaters that nest in my passionfruit vine.
(Ironically as I type this I can hear the tell tale scratching of mice in the room, or perhaps in the wall cavity behind me – urrgh).
4. The Weather – This week Daphne posted about the extreme fluctuations they are having with their weather. Here, if there isn’t a drought, there’s a flood. Any Melbournian will happily regale you with tales of dead plants during our 10 year drought, and equally they will tell you about the demise of many of the plants that did survive when it suddenly started to rain, and rain, and rain. Talk to any Sydneysider this summer and they will tell of the gardening problems of too much rain. Then there are the years when it doesn’t get hot in summer – the tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant refuse to ripen and all that you’re left with from your summer harvest is a few lovely but inadequate cucumbers. Of course there are also the years when it gets too hot. Read Diana’s blog and you’ll hear tales of destruction wrought but the extreme heat of an Adelaide summer. And all those are just fairly normal weather cycles. Then there’s the damage a weather event can do – like the destruction of Phoebes summer vegetables by our Christmas Day hailstorms. All in all its enough to drive a gardener round the bend. Oh for a perfect year with; average rainfall, a nice warm summer – warm enough to ripe tomatoes but not so hot they refuse to set fruit, and a cold but frost free winter – cold enough for the garlic to produce beautiful divided heads but not so cold that the lemongrass freezes in the ground. One year it will happen – but probably not soon….To be fair this year has been pretty good in Melbourne, hailstones aside.
5. Trees – This last one is really an opportunity for me to vent, yet again, about my next door neighbours ridiculously large eucalypts. Not only do these trees shade my garden from about 2pm onwards every afternoon. Not only do the particular species of eucalypt she is growing have the propensity to drop limbs for no obvious reason. Not only do their roots suck moisture from my soil. Not only do their roots penetrate my sewerage pipes and block them (actually this could also be my two year putting things down the toilet that he shouldn’t….). No those are not the only issues – one of the most annoying is that being eucalpts they emit a substance that makes plants not want to grow underneath them. Whilst this is manifestly useful to trees in the wild – less competition for resources and all that, it is very annoying when you find some nice shade loving vegetables and they still don’t look that happy underneath them. Incidently the photo above was taken last year – they are even bigger now…Whinge over and I do feel much better now!
It’s funny Liz, but I almost imagined your garden to be a little oasis of calm and perfection given the wonderful and abundant produce it produces…if you can achieve all that you do in spite of all you are up against then that is really inspirational to the rest of us!!
Perfection – he he he, if you could see the very messy reality you’d knowing why I find that entertaining. Thanks for the kind words though.
Well, looks like one of those trees is leaning nicely. Maybe it will fall soon 🙂 Here the deer have found my garden again and have already killed on plant.
Deer would be frustrating. My parents who are more rural have issues with kangaroos and wallabies but I don’t imagine they are as destructive as deer. I occasionally kind of hope it falls but I suspect it will take out a lot of my pots with it though, or more seriously hurt someone in the process, so a nice professional removal would be good…
I have a possum problem like your rodent one. At least I’m almost sure it’s possums, they tend to hang out in the fig tree at this time of year and apparently they like a nice nibble of my few remaining beans or the pumpkins struggling to mature on my wandering vine. I’m one of those that has a cat to keep the actual rodents down and he does a wonderful job – though occasionally brings me the evidence of his work which I’d rather not see. Sadly he does very occasionally catch a feathered friend rather than a fury foe, thankfully these only seem to be Indian Mynas or other such non-native birds.
I have black aphids too. But my main unsolved problems are with white fly one the zukes and cukes and powdery mildew on all sorts of things.
The weather thing is annoying isn’t it, but it all seems so much easier with water in the tanks. I grew up in the Wimmera where the drought started several years earlier and everything (and I mean everything) turned to dust. Living in a farming area when it fails to rain that many years in a row is very depressing. I try to be philosophical about it though the unexpected savage events are what get me down – like the hail storm on Christmas Day.
I have had some white fly this year but not so much that it seems to be doing too much damage to the plants. My cucumbers are currently succumbing to powdery mildew so I think its time to rip them out.
Oh I do enjoy your top 5 lists.
And I have the same problems as you – but not the big eucalypt one. Nothing worse than the sound of a gnawing rodent in your house.
It was rustling and scuttling around again last night – I think its in the wall cavity because I cant seem to see it but regardless its fairly ikkky.
I’m with you on the tree front. Our rear neighbours have the largest lili pilli in all creation right up against the fenceline that shades our entire backyard. Hence my frontyard vegetable growing, despite the southerly aspect. Unfortunately the local council is quite enamored with this massive freak-of-nature tree, and won’t let anyone touch it. I wish it would die of old age!
On the slug and snail front, have you ever tried multiguard slug pellets? They are essentially just pelletised iron chelates and totally harmless to everything but slugs and snails. They are extremely effective, and I haven’t needed any other solutions since trying them.
Have you tried making lili pilli jam? Its supposed to be qutie nice. My neighbours on the other side have a reasonably sized lili pilli (which fortunately shades absolutely nothing at all) and I keep meaning to collect some berries. Nice suggestion re the snail pellets – I will seek them out.
I have thought of that – and considering one year the tree dropped 160 kg (yes, you read right) of fruit on our side of the fence alone, that might be a good idea. Thankfully it was lopped by 10% before we bought the house, and it has seemed to set the fruit production back significantly. Unfortunately this year all the fruit that is dropping is pre-nibbled by either birds, rats or possums so I haven’t had the chance. Maybe next year, because I’m sure the tree isn’t going anywhere!
160kg is a ridiculously large amount of fruit. Hope you composted it – its got to be good for growing stuff in.
That was before we bought the place. My current approach is just to rake it into the chicken coop. Definitely nowhere near 160 kg this year, but still a lot of fruit, and the girls seem to be dealing with it well.
Yay for chooks!
We have a similar list, for sure. Slugs will eat everything here unless I use Sluggo. And we have deer that eat anything that isn’t protected, plus rabbits, possums, raccoons, and squirrels. Sometimes I feel like I live on a wildlife refuge! Aphids don’t attack a lot of things but when they do, there’s always a million of them. I feel your pain!
Love the name Sluggo it did make me smile. Here I am whinging about a few rats and mice when you have deer, rabbits, possums, raccoons and squirrels…
Another Fab Five! This is always so much fun to read.
Thank goodness the snails and slugs haven’t found my garden to be very hospitable, but the sowbugs have filled that gap. And I’m coming to terms with the local weather. But the rats, ugh, I heard one gnawing on something under the house the other night. Time to set the traps again. I have one bit of advice about trapping, try setting three traps together, with the business ends together. When the boogers try to steal the bait from one trap they may get snapped by one of the other two traps, it works sometimes, other times I find that I’ve just fed them extra treats… And put lots of traps out, I generally have 15 or more traps set at one time.
Aphids, yup, I get green ones and gray ones, black ones and pink ones, but not as many since I’ve let the alyssum volunteer all over the garden.
That tree thing. I gardened in the shadow of a neighbor’s huge pine trees for years. It made a winter garden nearly impossible. Wouldn’t you know it, they cut them down just after we moved, grrr. And now it’s my own oak trees making bad, the roots have found all that lovely soft moist nutritious soil in my raised beds.
If anybody ever told you that gardening is easy – they lied, big time.
Like the idea of setting the traps together – that will get them! Alyssum – nice suggestion!
It is truly a battle out there, and I often think of how we would starve if we relied solely on our own garden, and am glad we have other options. As I type this I am wondering if we should be putting the deer fence up early this year. That unpopular tree does seem to be listing ominously…
Deer are a whole other problem – very glad I don’t have to deal with them – I would love to see one though – I do find them beautiful animals
I had to have a laugh to myself for that last one. We were those annoying neighbours with the massive tree. The tree was here long before us. It shaded our garden and provided the house with much shade, that since the tree has been removed, we really miss in summer. It was supposed to drop limbs, but never did, never did any damage to drainage systems that we are aware of. Ours was Sydney Blue Gum, things did grow under it. So you want to know what our neighbours did to make up get rid of ours?
Yes, Yes, Yes – what did they do?
They annoyed us a lot about it, they would throw the branches over the fence when they fell off, they would tell us constantly that the tree was too big for a suburban back yard, and that the tree was destroying the fence. It was the fences that got us in the end.
Hmm perhaps I could get the fence to start to list a bit and that would persuade them…. I’m just too polite – and like my neighbours too much – to throw the branches back at them.
I’d have to put Foxes at the top of my list – so destructive! And latterly so brazen. They wander about in broad daylight and seem reluctant to move on when you try to shoo them away. Blackbirds come a close second. I think you can be proud that despite all the annoyances you list, you still manage to produce a wide range of lovely fresh produce.
Thanks Mark, I think everyone has annoyances of some sort of another – I would say the UK’s climate is pretty annoying from a veg growing perspective – its just that I whinge more.
My five is really only a four: Aphids, rats, possums, blackbirds. Cant think of a fifth.
Aphids really are the worst, the varieties attack different things, but each are damaging. The worst I had was a Cherry/pear aphid attack on my cherry trees. I had two trees, only one pulled through after significant pyrethrim spraying. I did a bunch of reading about softer controls, it seems that ladybirds and lacewings eat aphids, so the idea is to attract these to your garden. Daisy-type flowers are said to attract ladybirds and lacewings, you can even mail-order them. I find that zucchini leaves with powdery mould seem to harbour lots of yellow ladybirds in Melbourne.
I’m fighting against possums and rats at the moment, I’ve baited and taken care of 3 rats, but I still see them traipsing about my small patch, and the evidence is obvious. Possums eat the new shoots of everything, including olive, cherry, apple, succulents, rosemary, tomatoes. I’ve even caught them in the act, reached for the water spray, which seems to send them away, but not for long.
But nothing is as bad a rearing a lovely set of seedlings, only to find that a jerk blackbird has decided to kick its way through your nicely tilled beds, and the seedlings are now buried or upsidedown, roots to the sun.
My partner built me some wire cages that I put over newly planted seeds/seedlings to keep the blackbirds at bay – they are pretty unsightly but working fabulously. I like the daisy flower idea – I will have to try that one as the mroe ladybirds the happier I’ll be.
Aphids (blackfly) are such a nightmare on my broad beans every summer. I don’t use any sprays and I’m too squeamish to squash them but found that growing sacrificial plants such as nasturtiums meant that the aphids colonised those rather than my veggie plants.
I think I’ll try that around my garlic this year – I’m about to plant so the advice is very timely.
I love your list! Wonder if there’s a way to accidentally have that neighbor’s tree fall? 😉 I’d have to add squash vine borers… they are my nemesis. I have this year’s battle plan ready which involves trap crops and a borer bonfire! Probably not a good sign that I’m looking forward to toasting vine borers.. gardening has turned me into a murderer! I’m not too fond of Japanese beetles or squash bugs either along with aphids, snails, and fire ants. And the raccoons love to eat my melons. Hmm… sounds like a lot of things annoy me!
I would be it would probably squash either: my car, my garden, or the neighbours bungalow that houses their teenage son none of which are particualrly attractive prospects. Ah the problems of city living… Fortunatelyb I’ve never met a squash vine borer and I have no intention of doing so either….
I do enjoy your top 5, no matter what the topic! This one is a beauty though. I have recently abandoned my last seed raising of basil becasue of slugs. Aphids have been a problem this year – a wet Sydney summer – but, I have found a really good but wasteful solution – sraying them off with the hose. This only works when you have full tanks or in La Nina when you dont feel so guilty.
I confess I am a cat fancier. Harriet ( the cat) keeps mice under control and her admiers ( ugly rough boys with thik necks) deal with the rats that seem to eminate from the neighbours chicken pen! Thankfully Harriet is a hopeless bird catcher so it seems to all work quite well. As for shade, I cut out a wattle this year that had got too big and started shading my veg. So I kind of agree with you about your top 5!
I do like the spraying them with the hose solution for aphids – I do find that it works really well against the green aphids but not the black ones. Perhaps because the black ones are closer to the ground they just crawl back up the plants? Not sure what it is but whenever I go at them with the hose they reappear within a day or two.
Hmm, you might be right, I only get the green ones here…. lucky I dont get the black ones it seems!