My Garden Is Bugged!

One of the reasons I include a ramble column each month is to try to bring you gardening incidents and observations that are confidence builders.

Too often something happens in our gardens that we think is happening only to us, or that we in some way have failed in our passion because we find an insect, disease or other problem that threatens or claims a favorite plant or plants. This should never be the case, and whatever happens in your garden it should always be an experience to build on and learn from. I hope you learn from my experiences and mistakes. I certainly do from yours.When I left my home and garden on Memorial Day I was tired but happy. The garden looked great and problems that had haunted me for years seemed to be under control. All was right with the world. The rabbits had moved a couple of blocks away and some new cats were keeping them nervous. The groundhog that my non-gardening neighbor thought was cute and is living under his house now has a family and seems to be happy for the moment keeping the kids on the other side of the fence. The slugs and snails were few and far between and the garden was just plain happy.

I returned to the house on Friday evening just four days later. It was delightfully cool and there was still enough light for me to walk around the property with Esmeralda and we checked things out. She sniffed and scurried about looking for critters and I marveled as I do each spring at how the garden was developing and at the endless changes in placements of this hosta and that lily that I’d forgotten to do or had to be done.

But as I walked up to the end of the driveway something was amiss in a small 6-foot-diameter circle of perennials that grow where an old spruce had been removed several years ago. I’d planted a single wild lupine in the center of the circular bed three years ago and it had rewarded my neglect by self-seeding and producing a mass of wild lupine plants. But in the twilight I noticed flower stalks drooping, foliage lying on the ground and the mass of lupine plants looking like a storm had hit them.

In the dimming light it seemed that as I leaned down to examine the disheveled mess the entire mass of plants moved in unison. I moved to another vantage point and everything seemed to move yet again.

Within seconds I knew my problem was macrosiphum albifrons, or the lupine aphid.

Their hourglass shapes and the way they lined up on the stems and deposited their exoskeletons on the foliage were a dead giveaway, as was the way these green, social insects seemingly moved in unison as they sensed my presence. I was astonished, though, that in four short days thousands of these life-sucking insects had covered every lupine in the bed and pretty much done them in for this season.

Immediate action was needed. I went to the truck and grabbed my camera, then went to the basement, where I hoped I had a small pump bottle of insecticide. Luckily there was a ready-to-use bottle of pyrethrum with canola oil, so I grabbed it and headed back to the bed. One of the many attributes about pyrethrin is that it’s fast acting, with the downside being that it has no residual effects and works only on contact. And any aphid that decided to stand up and fight or hide would be smothered by the canola oil.

It worked. A squeeze of the trigger, a mist of pyrethrin/canola, and the aphids were in a panic. Masses of them immediately fell to the ground and as I circled the plantings I sprayed again and again, trying to get the stems as well as the tops of bottoms of the foliage.

It was apparent that I’d won the first skirmish in this battle. But it was getting dark. I retreated until morning.

Interestingly, this is one insect that we have contributed to our fellow British gardeners as an invasive species, as the lupine aphid is native to North America. But in the 1980s we somehow allowed it to cross the Atlantic and it’s now well ensconced in British gardens.

The following morning I commiserated with a gardening buddy a few blocks away, who’s a great gardener but doesn’t take insults like the aphids quite as seriously as I do. His response was simply, “Oh, anyone who grows lupines gets them once. If you take care of them (as in kill them all) you can go for years without them returning. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to grow lupines again.”

I got out the spray bottle and did battle one more time ... with purpose.

Once my tall garden phlox (phlox paniculata) began to send up new shoots in early April I was all over them with my 10x loupe looking for two-spotted spider mites, TSSM. These mites have caused heartbreaking damage in my garden each summer just as my phlox reach their peak. The foliage yellows, then cups and the plants look awful. I followed the expert’s advice and removed all the foliage and stems at the end of last season and I was shocked to find the mites back again and active by late April.

We’ve always been taught that these mites thrive at the end of the summer when it’s hot and dry. So what’s up with them showing up when it was cold and wet?

Well, I began to hammer my entomologist with this problem and he responded with a surprise answer ... that females can overwinter and lay eggs very early in the growing season. So out the window goes the age-old teaching that TSSMs show up only when it’s hot and dry ... unless you have an indoor gardenia, on which they seem to be endemic. That’s indoors where it’s hot and dry.

So my search for a “cure” began in earnest. Seems that TSSMs are also a problem on marijuana plants, and with all that’s going on out in Colorado and Washington with the commercialization of legal pot there’s a lot of research being done on TSSM control. And they said pot had no socially redeeming value. Hah.

Interestingly, the marijuana growers are pretty careful with what they spray on their pot, and suddenly I had a couple of options that there was no research on just a few years ago. Bottom line was that I had great success with a product called Pure Green Spray, which is 98 percent mineral oil that’s been highly refined. I also found that the miticide Avid was extremely effective as well as fairly benign. The problem with Avid was that it’s sold commercially for upward of $100 for 8 ounces. I needed only a few milliliters. I found a 1-ounce container for sale on Amazon. Not quite sure it’s legal to repackage and resell this stuff, but it’s available and a little bit goes a long way.

The other side benefit of using the Pure Green Spray is that it also seems to be keeping some of the foliar diseases at bay. This has also been seen as a benefit when using Neem oil, which is now being touted for its insecticidal effects as well as its disease-repressing effects. Another organic insecticide you should be considering is Spinosad. I mentioned this material last summer, and if you’re not familiar with it you should read up on it.

None of these insecticides are instant cures and you have to understand how they work and when to use them. That’s where Google and the internet come in. But between the oils, Neem, Spinosad and pyrethrin sprays we’ve got a pretty good arsenal.

Keep growing.