Bugs in the backyard

In The Garden with Brownie

Happy New Year and welcome back to what will be a bumper year of gardening chit-chat from me here in the GC&M News.
This time of year, gardens can see an increase in a native beetle called Red-shouldered Leaf Beetle (Monolepta australis).
This little orange-yellow beetle with a red band on the shoulders and a red spot on each wing, has a large appetite for leaves, and especially has a liking for tea-trees, flowering gums, fruit trees, leafy vegetables, wattles and a wide range of ornamental shrubs – including hibiscus.
Being so small (6mm), you only tend to notice them flying off your plants when you disturb them.
Usually by that time, they’ve done their damage and so it may be too late to address them.
But if you like, you can treat them successfully with a pyrethrum spray.
Another pesty insect you can find in large numbers is the 28 Spotted Ladybird (Epilachna vigintioctopunctata).
This introduced ladybird is a leaf-eater, with an insatiable desire for things like cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, tomato, potato, eggplant, watermelon, rockmelon, silverbeet, spinach, bush beans and climbing beans.
The 28-Spotted Ladybird is a larger variety – around 8mm across – being a dull orange colour with (surprise, surprise) 28 black spots (14 on each wing). Their larval stage is large (10mm), yellow and fuzzy looking.
Most other ladybirds you’ll see in the garden are smaller and are beneficial, eating aphids, scale, mites and powdery mildew.
Most of these good native ladybirds are either bright yellow, red or orange and have a lot less spots than the pesty one.
A distinctive way to identify when you have a 28-Spotted Ladybird problem is the appearance of ‘windowing’ to the surface of the leaves. This is because the beetle and larva eat the surface layers and not the leaf vein network, creating a net-like appearance.
To control them, you can use the ‘squish’ method – or if you’re not up o that, spray with a pyrethrum product.
Another pest you’ll see lots of are grasshoppers.
There are two main types, the common Green Vegetable Grasshopper (which has a pointy head) or little green and brown ones, which are the nymph stage of something like a small Wingless Grasshopper or the Large Hedge Grasshopper.
Like the famous plague locusts, garden grasshoppers can seemingly appear from nowhere and chomp through your leafy plants overnight.
Their favourite foods are basil, mint, leafy greens, lettuce, potato, hibiscus and roses.
Adult grasshoppers lay their eggs in the soil, which hatch out into small nymph hoppers. These hoppers need to eat a lot so that they can grow and go through a number od lifecycle stages (called instars) before they become an adult.
These nymphs are food themselves for a variety of predators, like spiders, wasps, lizards, birds, praying mantis and dragonfly – but their numbers can grow too quickly for the natural predators to keep on top of them.
This is when you have to take action or risk losing your plants Again the squish method or pyrethrum spray are good options. You can also use a bacteria spray (like Dipel) or something like Success, which are both bee-friendly.
My advice for all your garden pesty beasties is to be proactive and keep on top of them before they have a chance to make a meal of your precious plants. Learn what the nasties look like; check your plants regularly; take early and fast action; use netting on the more sensitive plants; and most of all, enjoy your garden.