Don't look if you are squeamish

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A reader suspects that my own garden looks beautiful. If only.

I will share my musings with you on this one another time but for today let me share some "finds" from earlier today. Some finds that one rather not finds. Some may find this a bit off-putting, so skip the pictures.

I am talking about garden pests and like most gardens I do get them in my patch. Let's have a look at the damage caused by number one:

Leaf cutter bee damage on rose

Two years ago I planted a climbing rose to cover an obelisk at the front of the house. It is "Tess of the d'Urbervilles", a crimson red beauty. This year it flowers for the first time with some enthusiasm but the foliage looks awful. On first glance you could be forgiven to suspect vine weevil. Vine weevil damage on foliage however is more characterised by smaller roundish notches as the weevils actually munch the leaves. In my case the damage is neat semi-circles with very clean edges as if cut by scissors. I suspect it is damage by leaf cutter bees; these bees cut out sections of leaf (they adore roses). The cut out leaf is taken away and not consumed but rolled up and used for nest building.
Since the rose is healthy otherwise with plenty of new growth and bees are essential for pollination, I have to live with the damage. It is not a great advertisement outside my front door ....


After the bees I quickly inspected another rose at the front. No leaf damage (yet) but this critter caught my eye:

sawfly

Right in the centre on the stem was a winged insect which I suspect to be a sawfly. The flies themselves are not the problem, it is their offspring. From the eggs this fly lays which grow onto the larvae stage. In this case this will be tiny caterpillars which will happily munch away the whole leaf leaving behind (no pun intended) just the rib system. These critters truly have a voracious appetite and since there's never just a single caterpillar, they can reduce a fine plant to a skeleton in very short time.
I squished the fly and need to patrol over the next few weeks to pick off and dispose any caterpillars that I can find.

Last but not least, my dahlias. Both "Arabian Night" and "Bora Bora" have been plagued by black aphids this year. As I try to garden to organic principles (note the careful wording here), I have tried to limit damage by giving the stems a good dowse with the hose pipe. It works to a degree but tonight I saw the most phantastic sight:


ladybirds on dahlia stem


Dozens of ladybirds (or ladybugs, depending on where you live) have moved in and are all over the dahlias. I wish them 'bon appetit'.