I can hardly believe that we are already in the month of February. In England it is still mid-winter but here at home hanging baskets and window boxes are featured everywhere, many growing petunias, one of my favourite flowers. When you look at a petunia you would hardly believe that it is a close relative of the potato, tomato, and tobacco, but it is a fact. Petunia is also the proper name for it, which makes it one of those lucky plants that is well known everywhere because its ‘proper’ name is attractive and very easy to remember. Its French origin petun means tobacco, and the petunia comes from South America, just like the tomato and potato. All three of these plants have more or less the same aroma if you crush the leaves. Some species of nicotiana have very attractive leaves and pleasant scents, but the petunias I am growing at present come in such a variety of colours and will come into flower this month and remain in flower for months.
Years and years ago at Kew Gardens I grew a plant of the Mexican pony tail, Nolina recurvata. Growing on a single stem which can attain six feet, it produces the most graceful head of leaves. A few years later I acquired another specimen, and as one might expect by now it has another name – Beaucarnea recurvate. Mexican pony tails are curious plants, developing a large swollen stem base for storing water. A kind of Mexican big foot. It does produce the most graceful foliage, and would be valuable as part of a well-lit modern interior decor (requiring little water), or a small patio. Any halfway decent catalogue will list it, and it grows very quickly from seed. If you get a chance, buy some. Give it full sun and a dry part of the garden and it will thrive.
Another Mexican was the cause of some concern this week. I have mentioned Antigua heath before, and I have it in abundance. Mine grows underneath my bedroom window, and is a particular favourite of a pair of hummingbirds. Having taken their fill of water and nectar they often come into the interior for a look around. It takes an age to catch them (and oh so gently, for a 12-year old boy) and get them out again. They promptly started feeding again having been mightily bored with television.
The number of insect pests which cause real trouble in the garden is relatively small. Probably not more than half a dozen. And real trouble only occurs if they manage to breed and get a grip on plants as do red spider mites, mealy bugs, greenfly, blackfly and scale. These more than any other pests will occupy our attention at some time or other. So what to do?
I prefer to avoid chemicals if I can and start off by using my fingers to rub them out. There is a higher percentage of all major crops lost to pests nowadays than were lost in the 1940s. There are a number of reasons for this, of course, but one of the most important things is that there is less crop rotation and modern chemicals are highly effective at killing off the natural enemies of pests as well as the pests themselves.
We should try and encourage the natural enemies of our plants wherever possible. This might be called the biological route. In order to have little friends and keep them to help us the garden must be a hospitable place, where pollinating insects can get on with the job of pollinating, and the good parasites and predators can get on with the job of killing their less desirable relatives without their lives being threatened by a weekly spray of chemicals, liquids or dusts. Spiders are natural enemies of many pests, and can be encouraged by the use of plenty garden compost. Ladybirds will reduce populations of aphids, scale, whiteflies, mites and leafhoppers by over 60 per cent; and an Australian ladybird (Cryptolaemus sp) is deadly to the mealybug. Both adults and larvae are voracious feeders, and the only disadvantage involves recognition, for it looks just like an extra large mealybug and one must take care not to be over zealous in rubbing it out. Of course, once beneficial insects eat their way through their food supply that, as they say, is the end of the penny section. They die out, and one has to reintroduce the good guys periodically. But they are now getting so cheap that this is getting less and less of a problem. Their introduction and reintroduction into the small garden once or twice is cheaper than using chemicals throughout the year and safer all round, since it need only be done when there is a problem. Start thinking about this and may your God go with you.
