Waldorf Wildlife in Autumn

Colchicum cilicicum and cyclamens

The non floral signs of autumn for us are bare patches in the lawns from curl grub damage and bare areas appearing in garden beds as we deadhead and cut back the summers flowers. We used parasitic nematodes on one of our two wedding lawns at the beginning of December and now have much worse baring off on the untreated lawn. Tom and I dug up a shovel sized square from both lawns to see what we could find. We only did this once for each lawn because the dug areas are not a good general look for weddings. In the lawn untreated last year we found 7 big curl grubs in the 20cm square hole dug by the shovel. On the lawn treated in December we found 3 smaller grubs in the same sized area. These are very encouraging results and we hope that our treatment did reduce the population of large grubs in December. These curl grubs are the Dusky Pasture Scarab larvae Sericesthis nigrolineata.

Lawn treated in December

Untreated Lawn

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We decided to do an autumn treatment to remove the big grubs currently doing the damage and give the lawn a good run through the autumn. Last week we measured the ground temperature at 20degrees C. We ordered the nematodes from Ecogrow in Canberra and they arrived yesterday. In a week the ground temperature has dropped to 16degreesC! They are stressed below 15degreesC. The ambient temperature when I put them on was around 14degreesC so we hope they quickly find a nice warm curl grub to cosy up to!!

Striped Marsh Frog

We are putting out our site made compost on garden areas that are looking a bit bare. I found this frog in the compost as I spread it on the garden. It was lucky not to get skewered with the mulch fork. The frog measures around 4.5cm long and I think it is a Striped Marsh Frog Limnodynastes peronii.

A few more floral signs of autumn are autumn roses,  late summer/autumn wisteria and dahlias. I have not had much success with dahlias as part of border plantings but continue to try, focusing on the smaller varieties. I bought this dahlia at a community market knowing it was a seedling of the Bishop of LLandaff. I bought the seedling with the darkest foliage and while the flower has not turned out red it is making a healthy show in the entrance driveway.

Soul Sister

Autumn wisteria

Seedling from Bishop of LLandaff

Compost Pile Number 32

Ceratophyllum demersum being layered into compost pile no. 32

A once a year ingredient has gone into this compost pile . In preparation for the Garden Festival I don waders on a sunny day and get into the pond to reduce the density of the pond plant Ceratophyllum demersum. It is an Australian native but does have a tendency to clog water ways. It is not endemic to Tasmania where it is regarded as a weed and is an unwanted organism in New Zealand. I think birds have brought it to our rock pool. Once it is out of the water we let it dry for a day. It becomes reasonably light and is transported to the compost area to be layered into the next heap where it readily breaks down. Our heaps are located under radiata pines and consequently we cover them to limit the influence of the growth inhibitor released from the falling pine needles. Until recently we covered the piles with old carpet but this limited the penetration of rainfall and so stopped the heap working. Recently we have changed the covering to 70% shade cloth. The pine needles slide off and the rain penetrates. We are continuing to get weekly showers so the compost is working and the lawns and gardens are in good shape for the festival.

Paul Scherer with Gwen and Flaming Flag

The tulip Paul Scherer is finally making an appearance in our entrance bed with tulips Gwen and Flaming Flag.

Malus floribunda in the rain

I photographed our espaliered crab apple Malus floribunda during one of the showers. This crab apple was planted against the newly constructed brick terrace wall (with fashionable extruded mortar) in 1969/70. There were originally two but only this one remains.

Espaliered crab apple

Steelblue Ladybird

 

Steelblue Ladybird Halmus chalybeus

We found this beautifully coloured native ladybird as we were trimming back the hydrangeas. It is a beneficial insect controlling scale commercially but also predating aphids. It and has been exported to Western Australia, Hawaii, California and New Zealand to help control scale in citrus plantations. It is a very small ladybird, only 3-4mm long and really needs a macro lens for a good photo. It has the ability to completely enclose itself within its wing covers making it safe from ant attack.

 

Flowering at the moment we have Arisarum vulgare in the greenhouse and an Echeveria sp. on our experimental succulent wall. I would like to use the Arisarum as a ground cover but it does have weed potential so we have confined it.

Arisarum vulgare

Echeveria sp.

Composting notes

Slime mould

Black soldier fly larva

We found a beautiful slime mould on the side of our compost bay a few weeks ago. Slime moulds feed on decaying organic matter and in this situation are probably associated with the leaf mulch we layer into the bay to absorb food scrap moisture and provide carbon. The yellow fruiting bodies are produced when the mould is under stress, it may have been the onset of the very warm weather. I photographed the mould in the morning and by the afternoon it had dried up. A common name for this mould is dog vomit mould which is especially apt once it has dried off.

After the run of hot weather I found a soldier fly larva on a freshly constructed compost pile. These larva are brilliant decomposers and are being used to break down food scraps containing meat and dairy. They are very fast composters and once the larvae are fully developed they separate themselves out from the composting material so can be harvested for fish or chook food. They need higher summer temperatures for effective composting and so we only see them here in very warm weather.

PLA drinking straws in the veggie scraps

Up Beet are using PLA bioplastics for some of their takeaway containers and their  drinking straws. Some of the straws end up in our compost. These straws are made from Polylactic acid derived from corn plants. The material will break down into organic components under hot composting conditions. The heat required is usually only generated in industrial composting systems but we do generate up to 65 degrees C in our compost piles so we cut them up and throw them in.  They haven’t  been coming in for long but on a recent turning of the pile we noticed they had become very brittle and were falling apart.

Caterpillar season

We have been summer pruning the Boston ivy back from paths and doorways and found two caterpillars feeding on the leaves plus a wasp that predates them. All the insects are Australian natives.

Phalaenoides glycinae larva

Phalaenoides glycinae is the Grapevine moth and is an agricultural pest in grapevines in Australia. The Indian Myna bird was introduced to combat this caterpillar but the bird itself turned into a pest.  Currently being investigated as a biological control for the Grapevine moth is the Ichneumon wasp.

Ichneumon sp.  (Photo by Lexie)

 

There were plenty of these in the Boston ivy but unlike the caterpillars they are very fast moving and difficult to photograph. Lexie’s patience paid off with the photo shown here. The wasps are a bit more orange in full sunlight.

 

Papilio aegeus larva

Papilio aegeus Orchard Swallowtail butterfly

Papilio aegeus is the Orchard or Citrus Swallowtail butterfly, a very beautiful butterfly. The photo of the butterfly was taken in February 2013.

In the fern house

We have a little old structure at the back of our garden shed where we keep our replacement indoor plants, try and strike cuttings and germinate seedlings. It is not ideal as either a greenhouse or fern house but we make it work for us. One of our helpers there is the Australian semi-slug Helicarion mastersi which is called a herbivore but eats biofilm and sooty mould. If there is any plant damage in the area we can usually find a pest slug or snail also in residence.

We have a few plants of general interest in there from time to time. Two South African plants are flowering at the moment, Utricularia bisquamata flowers with Drosera capensis (also South African) and moss and Stapelia asterias.

Helicarion mastersi is called a semi-slug because it cannot retract fully into it’s shell

Helicarion mastersi, the little “horn” on it’s tail is an identifying feature

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drosera capensis  the Cape sundew, a carnivorous plant from South Africa growing with moss

Stapelia asterias a carrion flower from South Africa called carrion because of the scent designed to attract specialist pollinators.

Insects in the garden

Fungus eating ladybird Illeis galbula

After a hot spell, Christmas was cool and damp and consequently stress free for gardeners worried about wilting pot plants. The summer warmth brings out the insects and we identified our 5th Ladybird species -the Australian native fungus eating ladybird – a handy beneficial in humid conditions.

We have been monitoring the whitefly and thrips populations on our abutilons since introducing the green lacewing larvae and have recorded a huge drop in pest numbers using both yellow and blue sticky

Brown lacewing on blue sticky trap with white flies a beetle and an unidentified fly

traps. We can’t say if the green lacewings contributed because we have been unable to spot either the larvae or adults in the vicinity. We did trap a brown lacewing adult on our final sticky trap and did see a brown lacewing larva on the abutilon. Environmental conditions may have contributed as we have greatly reduced watering and there was the hot dry spell. Our final insect photo is a dragon fly perched on an ivy leafed geranium. I actually gathered it up as an untidy leaf which then vibrated in my hand.

Dragonfly

Green Lacewing Release

Every spring I aim to release beneficial insects into the garden. These insects are bred in insectaries throughout Australia and can be found on the Good Bugs website http://www.goodbugs.org.au . This year I have decided to target the thrips and whitefly population in our under cover garden.

part of the under cover garden and adjoining viburnum

The thrips are attracted to our under cover blechnum ferns  and to the Viburnum odoratissimum hedge adjoining the garden.  The covered garden is a haven for insect pests, no rain to wash them off, no wind to blow them away and possibly a warmer site through winter. As well as thrips and whitefly we have been managing scale on the hen and chickens fern.  We had been trying to work out what cultural practices might be benefiting the pest species and when Lexie brought in a water meter we found one. We found that although the surface of the garden was very dry it was saturated lower down and must have a water proof base.  The plants were being over watered which may have stressed them sufficiently to encourage the pests. We now don’t water at all through the winter. We check the moisture levels twice a week but are still watering less than once a week. Unfortunately the insect pests have not entirely departed. There are two beneficial insects that target both white fly and thrips. These are the minute pirate bug Orius armatus and the green lacewing Mallada signata. These insects are general predators with thrips and whitefly larvae on their list. These insects prefer warm weather and may not overwinter in the mountains so may need to be introduced each year. We chose the green lacewing because it is available in smaller packs of 300 eggs (2000 insects from the Orius breeders) and we can do sequential releases a few weeks apart.

Bugs for bugs lacewing release box and yellow sticky trap

It is recommended that the insects be introduced before there is a major infestation and so we ordered our first release for the beginning of November.  These insects require 15C to hatch and eat. Unfortunately the weather cooled down to 12C and rained just as we received the hatching eggs. We distributed them in the under cover section and out in the garden but are not sure how the weather effected their release.We put a sticky trap over the abutilon to monitor insect numbers and a week after release we had 131 thrips and 112 whitefly on our sticky card. These are not encouraging numbers! We will continue to monitor and will release another 300 green lacewings at the end of next week, possibly all under cover if the weather is still wet. The green lacewings come from Bugs for Bugs www.bugsforbugs.com.au .

Wild biocontrol on one of our roses

The hover flies have been taking effective care of the aphid population throughout the garden this spring but this particular rose (a David Austin I think) must have needed some special attention. The first thing to catch our eye where the aphid mummies up all the flower bud stems. These I think are the result of the aphids being parasitised by a wasp but we didn’t witness that part of the action.

aphid mummies

Mopping up remaining live aphids we found two species of ladybird (there are two side-on in the picture above).

The ladybirds we found and identified were the Transverse Ladybird Coccinella transversalis and the Spotted AmberLadybird Hippodamia variegata.

Coccinella transversalis

The Transverse Ladybird has V shaped markings rather than spots on it’s hardened wings (elytra).

Hippodamia variegata

The Spotted Amber Ladybird (or White Collared Ladybird) is an introduced species but does predate aphids. This ladybird was hard to identify because the number of spots varies. Our ladybird had 8 spots on its elytra but the pronotum and head markings  identified it.

We kept looking and found two larvae eating the aphids. The first we found was the larva of the Brown Lacewing Micromus tasmaniae and then the larva of a ladybird. We think the ladybird larva is that of the common spotted ladybird (Harmonia conformis) but we did not find this adult ladybird on the roses.

Micromus tasmaniae

The lacewing larva is eating a live aphid next to an aphid mummy.

The black and orange ladybird larva dominates the photo and it was only when Lexie studied the photo that she saw the lacewing larva.

The Brown Lacewing larva and the Spotted Amber Ladybird have been noted together by researchers and are being studied as possible biocontrol agents in brassica crops and greenhouses in NSW.   A web search found a few papers on the subject from CSU http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au .

Lawn Recovery after the Festival

The festival has finished successfully with lots of appreciative visitors and money raised for the hospital.

We now leave the festival behind and head in to the wedding season. The lawns need to receive a pick-me -up and continue looking good. Water is a crucial component of a tonic in this dry month. On a foggy, damp day with 5mm in the rain gauge  we ventured out with our watering cans and distributed a weak solution of seasol and black strap molasses over the main lawns.  We did put the sprinklers on too because ideally the lawns need another 20mm of rain for full soil food web activity (as it turned out the light rain continued through the day and we ended up with a total of 23mm).

Part of the lawn after the festival

The molasses is a bacterial food and bacteria drive the soil food web. The increased activity should result in a measurable improvement in aeration and reduction in compaction. The seasol provides a range of trace elements and operates as a general tonic. All the minerals required for a plant both above and below ground  are present in a seaweed extract. Seaweed does not have a root system embedded in soil which is then left behind at harvest.  The seaweed in seasol is  beach cast bull kelp or sustainably harvested knotted kelp.

 

 

Possibly Ceratophyllum species and something that looks like moss

We brewed some actively aerated compost tea overnight and spread that onto the lawn on the afternoon following the rain. The tea was brewed in rain water using molasses, compost, fish hydrolysate and worm castings. The tea adds large numbers of a wide variety of microbes to the soil to aid the cycling of the soil food web.

We have a water weed in our Rock pool which I think is a Ceratophyllum sp. We clear some of it out from time to time and add it to the compost where it breaks down very quickly. I hope it may add complete nutrients as seaweed does.