WHAT A LITTTLE ONE TAUGHT ME ABOUT NATURE

By LADYBUG

These are probably not images you expect to (or wish to) see in a gardening column but this is what many gardeners I speak to have been dealing with in recent weeks.

This summer, everyone was talking about LDD moths – the name preferred by Ontario’s invading species program, according to which the other name is derived from a culturally offensive slur. Suddenly all the trees were wearing collars of burlap or duct tape and one could see large caterpillars crawling in and out. I don’t know how many people then actually picked the caterpillars off the burlap and killed them, but going by the number dripping from trees on to the sidewalk, not many.

The voracious caterpillars were said to have attacked and eaten their way through 300 species of trees and shrubs.

And other garden pests hadn’t taken the year off, either.

My oleanders that were wintering indoors were suddenly covered with minuscule yellow dots. So tiny that they are hard to spot at first, which works great for them because they happily multiply unnoticed until each stem and the underside of leaves are covered with a jiggling yellow mass. A disgusting, jiggling yellow mass. 

I tried my home remedies at first.

Wiped them off and sprayed with a solution of baking soda. They were back in full force.

Wiped them off again and sprayed with a solution of neem powder. Not too effective.

Repeated the process with a spray of vinegar and water. Again, not much of a dent in the population.

I took my Google lens to it and learned that they were called oleander aphids. A pest specific to my collection of tropical plants that found its way to them. Not much you can do about them, I read, other than wipe them off and hope for the best. One remedy suggested letting ladybugs loose on them. While I like the idea of my namesake cleaning up my plants, that was not really applicable indoors. Or outdoors, for that matter, I think. For the suggested number was 1500 for each plant. And I have several. So I continued the wiping and spraying (and muttering). And when the plants moved out in spring, I used a spray a garden centre had recommended for dormant insects on my apple tree. A couple of applications of that seemed to have worked the best, so far. 

Then I had what I call lily beetles munching away on my Chinese lanterns. Like lily beetles that can destroy prized lilies, their larvae also cover themselves with their own excrement, possibly as a natural defence against predators.

But again my all-knowing Google lens revealed that what I was dealing with were three-lined potato beetles, or Lema daturaphelia. Which, strangely enough, are uncommon on potato, but very common on tomatillo and of course, Chinese lanterns are a close cousin, and therefore a favourite. The second part of the name, daturaphelia, had me worried for my dhatura plants, and sure enough, I found a few on these, too. A couple of sprays were recommended, along with ones of neem oil, but hand-picking them, it was suggested, was a sure way to get rid of them.

So that’s what I took to doing after the larvae hatched in late June and July. After spending a few days in a row sitting by the beds, systematically stripping the plants of leaves in a futile attempt to reduce their food supply and drive them elsewhere, I picked the darn things off when I spotted them. Which was every time I walked by the bed. I discovered that when I am confronted with something that is attacking my plants I easily overcome my initial resistance. The “Ewww, this is gross!” is worked out of a gardener soon.

While on an exterminator mission, I couldn’t help but ponder on the mysteries of nature. These mollycoddled plants, sold as exotic tropicals, were struggling against infestations. Yet the very same dhaturas and oleanders flourish in conditions that would make a self-respecting plant curl up in despair. Oleanders, the plants of choice for highway plantings in India, survive the heat and dust, the fumes and the debris, even infrequent and irregular watering and reward passers-by with glorious bunches of blooms in red, pink, white and yellow. Dhatura, with its poisonous seed pods is pulled out at first sight in urban settings and yet it thrives in ditches and fields, showing off its large white trumpets in defiance of neglect.

But recently, I had a new way of looking at things presented to me by a soon-to-be eight-year-old.

Walking with me on our way to the backyard, our grandson caught me in the act of picking the beetles off the plants and then squishing them under my garden clogs.

“Why are you killing nature?” he asked, aghast.

I had to come up with something quick. To shift the blame, I said, “Because they are killing all these plants, see?”

“That’s their food,” he responded, reasonably.

“But if bugs eat up all the plants, what will people eat?” I said, not so reasonably, because it’s not like we consume Chinese lanterns. Or dhatura.

“They come to your garden because you have all these plants,” said the little fellow, determined to drag me back to the straight and narrow.

I backed away from the beetle infestation and meekly followed him, thinking I would let nature take its course.

Will I have the bright orange Chinese lanterns that I love come fall or will I be left with chewed up stems? Time will tell. But I will be able to look the little one in the eye  and say I stopped killing nature.