Forum home› The potting shed
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Annihilation in the garden

B3B3 Posts: 27,505
in The potting shed
I can't bring myself to use weedkillers or nematodes in the garden, but I do happily stamp on a snail, snip a slug or squish an aphid. 
I don't want to completely obliterate any pest -  plant or crawler but I want to adjust the balance in favour of my chosen plants ( JKW  and marestail excepted ) in my garden. I am happy for them to get in with their lives  so long as they don't do too much damage.
Am I bonkers?
In London. Keen but lazy.
«13

Posts

  • chickychicky Posts: 10,410
    edited April 2021
    Not bonkers @B3 ....I strive for the same.  Encourage blue tits to hoover up the aphids, hope the frogs and toads deal with the molluscs.  But am also a slug snipper come those balmy summer evenings ✂️
  • robairdmacraignilrobairdmacraignil Posts: 782
    Keeping a small number of the garden pests around should provide food for the predators that will keep the pest numbers low so I don't think this type of garden management is in any way bonkers. I think my response is usually based on how delicate the plant being eaten is. If I see some caterpillars on a tree or shrub I just let them hang about and provide food for the birds but if they were on my vegetables they'd need to get squashed before they wreck my crop.
    https://www.youtube.com/user/sustainableveg/videos
  • K67K67 Posts: 2,506
    Dare I mention vine weevils? 😨😠
  • PosyPosy Posts: 3,601
    Speaking as someone who wanders round the garden, in the dead of night, picking up slugs by the light of a torch, I can vouch for the fact that nobody on here is remotely bonkers. It's just a little British eccentricity......
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    I’m very much live and let live, I don’t even do slug hunts but then we don’t seem to have a big problem with them either. But I do squash lily beetles and am beginning to feel mean that they are the only pest I actively hunt and kill 🙄
     If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero
    East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    Gardening is thought of as a nurturing activity. I wonder what the score would be if we tallied up the plants and creatures we nurtured against those that we have killed.
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Butterfly66Butterfly66 Posts: 970
    B3 said:
    Gardening is thought of as a nurturing activity. I wonder what the score would be if we tallied up the plants and creatures we nurtured against those that we have killed.
    Other than said lily beetles, I don’t kill anything and haven’t done so for a very long time. 

    However I have just remembered that I do facilitate the death of vine weevils. If I find a pot or plant with any in the soil, I lay it out in the lawn on an old compost bag and then enjoy watching the birds have a feast. Now I’m imagining myself as one of those old crones cackling at the guillotine 😳
     If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero
    East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    What about weeds?  Do you kill them?
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,090
    Last garden had slugs by the million.  I would leave the ones in teh grass and compost alone but those that went for my treasures were hunted out and lobbed in the road to take their chances with passing traffic.

    Here there are more snails than slugs.   Some gardeners here collect them up and feed them then cook and eat them.  Not for me.  I used to lob them into the hedgerow across the rad where they could set up home or risk being run over coming back.  Oh just stamps on them.   Haven't found too many yet this year but now I offer them and any slugs to the chooks.  Yum yum.

    Other than that I will happily squish lily beetles, use nets to protect brassicas and I will squish early clumps of aphids with my fingers while I wait for the predators to arrive.   We also left a huge central area to grow wildflowers last year to encourage insects for the swifts and swallows and that worked.   Still no bats tho.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • TheScottishGardenerTheScottishGardener Posts: 62
    edited April 2021
    I've been fairly lucky so far (though I have said it now) and don't kill anything because nothing has been such a big problem in my garden, I did think I might have had some lily beetles last year but never saw them and never really saw evidence of a real problem.
    Something I did get last year which was the worst year so far for it in the garden, was aphids :( this year I've sowed some seeds for sacrificial plants in the hopes it'll keep them away from the plants I care more for!

    What I do have... is a resident hedgehog. I don't mind him, but he trundles through my lovely borders and flattens things :( or just generally makes a mess! Oh - and poops everywhere.
Sign In or Register to comment.