Comments on: Eating the Garden

By: ClareSnow

ClareSnow — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:10:45 +0000

I’ve never experienced “little green worms” eating my strawberries, but anything that looks like a little green worm is probably a caterpillar. Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) is a naturally occurring soil bacteria that kills caterpillars. A commercial preparation of the dead bacteria is available and spraying it on what the caterpillars are eating, whether this is the strawberry fruit or leaves, will poison them. Excess Bt is washed off by water or rain, thus it’s not harmful to people who eat the strawberries. I blogged about Bt here http://elsewear.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/getting-rid-of-bugs/ with some links to info on it.

A spray made of garlic and chilli has been recommended to me for killing tomato-eating-caterpillars. You might like to try that – it will be cheaper than Bt.

By: dave

dave — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:20:01 +0000

Does anyone have a problem with little green worms eating the strawberry plants?

What can a person do about this?

By: Growing Garlic « Ockham’s Razor

Growing Garlic « Ockham’s Razor — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 05:55:50 +0000

[...] January 2009 by ClareSnow Last April I planted garlic in my garden for the first time. At the time I wondered if I’d planted it too late, but it was just right. [...]

By: More native plants « Ockham’s Razor

More native plants « Ockham’s Razor — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:55:27 +0000

[...] all these plants I needed to clear some space for them. I’m going to rip out more lawn next to the current garden bed for more native plants. Soon there will be hardly any lawn to mow! [...]

By: Nada

Nada — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:24:11 +0000

Thanks. i’ve got it growing in my garden….so now apart from admiring the lovely, grey green form, i will use it on caterpillars which are a major problem at my sister’s place.

Wormwood can be steeped in alcohol….for purely medicinal purposes of course…….

By: ClareSnow

ClareSnow — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:38:05 +0000

Nada, wormwood spray is meant to be used on brassicas. It kills leaf eating caterpillars like cabbage white butterfly caterpillars (Pieris rapae). I don’t know if it works on the worms in tomatoes, it probably doesn’t because they’re eating the fruit. I’ve never actually made or used wormwood spray, I just want to cause I have the plant. It doesn’t help that I’ve never grown brasscias, space is at a premium in my garden, So I can’t let the strawberries grow where ever they want :)

I just googled “wormwood spray” and found http://www.riverhouse.com.au/recipes/pest_control.html It does use boiling water.

Julie, thanks for the links. I didn’t know about them.

By: Julie

Julie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:56:29 +0000

Thought I’d share a couple of garden websites with you (you might have heard of them already, but just in case!).

1. Kitchen Gardeners International http://www.kitchengardeners.org/ – just found this today from a Grist.org post.

2. MyFolia http://myfolia.com/ – a website for tracking the progress of your garden. I’m on there already under the name gogreener.

By: Nada

Nada — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:08:26 +0000

Your garden’s looking great. I had no luck with tomatoes this year either. Little fruit and what there was, was eaten by a wallaby, i think…..or some kind of rodent. They just munched into the green tomato and left the rest. Argh!!

The strawberry runners you can pot on, to form your next strawberry plants. Start a new bed. Strawberry plants become tired after a couple of years and by potting up the runners, you can always have good plants going. Don’t you just love that! It’s just a question of space – where do you put the new ones? Never enough space.

Oh, with the wormwood – do you steep the plant in hot water? How much herb to water? Do you dilute it further to spray onto plants? Does it work on all plants/worms…eg those that eat brassicas?