Attack Of The Killer...
PANIC! as SWARMS of slimy insects RAMPAGE YOUR ROSES!
SCREAM! as they SUCK your greenery's LIFEBLOOD!
RUN! to the garden centre to find something environmentally unfriendly to KILL the HORRIFIC MONSTERS!
FEAR! these terrifying CREATURES OF DOOM will turn their DRIPPING JAWS on the HUMAN RACE!
Benedict had a shock the other day. Thinking that Greenwich Council had painted the lamp post outside his gaff with a special new, textured finish, he was yuckked-out to find it was a swarm of greenfly.
In his garden, worse was to come. His plants, smothered in the lime-green nasties, were beginning to droop.
Whatever he does, they keep coming back. He's now wondering if this is personal. Has a vengeful Greenwich god wreaked a biblical plague upon him for some dreadful transgression - or does everyone have greenfly-a-go-go just now?
I've been peering at plants in other people's gardens in a suspicious fashion and they do seem to have vast quantities of nasty green bugs on them (and a few nasty black bugs too.) So maybe Benedict's not been picked out for Personal Purgatory after all.
Maybe we'll get a plague of Greenwich Toads to eat the plague of Greenwich Greenfly. But then we'd need a plague of Greenwich - hang on, what eats toads..?
Thanks, Rich, for the last-min pic...
Labels: Green Greenwich, Weird Greenwich
posted by The Greenwich Phantom at
09:24
10 Comments:
And I was plagued by them while sitting in the garden at The Union the other night.........I'm getting a bit paranoid.
( your picture looks a lot like Mrs B's reaction to said plague)
It seems to be London-wide. We need to round up all the ladybirds - oh no,the British ones have been got at by the foreign invaders. Aagh, nature red in tooth and claw...
Fortunately, help is at hand with Capability Bowes's recommendations for getting rid of greenfly without resorting to chemical attack:
1) Soapy water. When your washing up liquid bottle is all but empty, fill it from the tap with cold water and shake vigorously (remember to put the top back on!) then squirt liberally all over the greenfly. The foam will gum up their mouths and they will be unable to feed, resulting in a slow, grisly death from starvation. (note that some plants will react very badly to being sprayed with soapy water - I nearly killed a lovely hellebore by doing this, so if you have a particularly prized plant, best not to use this method. However, when the alternative is watching it being sucked to death by greenfly........)
2) Hie yourself along to the garden centre, get a pack of Poached Egg plant seeds (Limnanthes douglasii) and pop these in around your garden. The blooms attract hover fly, which lay their eggs on the greenfly larvae, resulting in a slow, grisly death through being eaten alive from the inside out.
3) On tall plants, a good shaking is enough to send the greenfly falling to the ground. You can then have a good stamp, or leave the little blighters for the birds to pick up
4) for those of you with infinite patience, a cotton bud dipped in lighter fuel is the ultimate weapon. Deadly, accurate, satisfying - but painstaking.
Oh, and as for the Greenwich Toads, they can be found sitting in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall.
All good methods Capability, but, I have three mature Sycamores (with preservation orders) and the underside of every single leaf is covered with the little B*****s , and trying to climb 30 foot up a ladder with soapy water and a cotton bud, I dont think will quite cut it.
Having done a bit of research I have found a product in America that you drill into the trunk and it releases an systemic pesticide, but its $100 dollars each plus shipping. Has anyone heard of a similar product here?
Thanks though C Bowes.
I tried the soapy water thing last year and the year before. Only problem is that I would now need to order a 15-litre refill pack of ecover to get rid of the blighters - the remnants of one bottle would do the greenfly on about 4 leaves of our climbing rose.
I can't really tell if it worked or not but the patio underneath looked quite clean by the end of the summer.
I'm sorry you all seem to look down on toads so much - I've always been very fond of the one(s) in my garden.
Far from it Edith, I/we love toads here.
Try a search for "Toadhog day"....
I am feeling rather left out because the plague in my garden is not of the green but the black variety.
My friend who has an allotment swears by rotting garlic juice - I can think of some local pubs that could provide that to the local gardening population...
also requiring patience, but no nasty chems - squeeze 'em between forefinger and thumb. Unpleasant maybe, but it works.
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