The Usual Suspects

The lake at Reaseheath in autumn sunshine

An integral part of the RHS Level 2 Practical is the 'Ident' exercise, where a selection of specimens displayed one week with labels are lined up the following week without, and us students have to correctly identify them.  It's handy to have a small camera to hand while the labels are out, and the resulting photos make for a useful resource for future use.

We've recently done vegetable seed identification, with the added challenge of translating the humble spud and lowly leek into Latin, but the ident prior to that was pests, disorders and diseases for which Plain English was quite acceptable. 

So here, fresh from the Defence Against the Dark Arts line up, are a few of the Usual Suspects...

Some of these have fairly simple, non-chemical solutions - for example increasing soil pH by liming is a good preventative against Club Root, and Blossom End Rot can be tackled by regular watering and adequate calcium.  Codling moth is usually sprayed against, though some degree of control is possible using traps smelling sweetly of lady moths that lure in and catch unsuspecting male moths on sticky paper.  Tough luck, guys!

Others, such as Honey Fungus, are seriously bad news and causing incurable havoc in domestic and historic gardens.  Some trees and woody shrubs are more resistent than others but its one of those things you really don't want to find in your garden and can spread a long way underground.

On the creepy-crawly side, we got to peer at Mealy Bug, Scale Insect and Two-spotted Spider mite, though the latter were already in trouble as they were in the final throes of predation by a parasitic bug that essentially does an 'Alien' job on them, laying its eggs inside the mite larvae.

And finally, everyone's least favourite garden gangsters, the vine weevil and the slug got to show us what they can do.  Most of us are probably more familiar with the damage the vine weevil grubs do to plant roots than the adult beetles' attacks on leaves, but it's a useful warning that they're about before you find out through your primulas unexpectedly keeling over through having no roots left.  Apparently, there are nematode biological controls for both, though the classic '50 ways to kill a slug' contains enough other imaginative ways to dispose of them that it seems a shame to resort to such stealthy, and relatively expensive means. 

Especially if you have a sharp stick, secateurs or scissors to hand!