Yours Magazine Australia — January 04, 2018

60

GARDENING

P

eople tend to think the world’s

most beautiful gardens and

vegetable patches are pest-free.

Let me tell you this isnotthe case –

every garden has its annoying pests!

Thankfully, all you need is a varied

management plan to keep them away.

Here are m ti s to create such a lan.

The best way to confuse pests is to

increase biodiversity. The traditional

way of cultivating vegetables is to

grow them in rows. While this makes

keeping tabs on them easy, it gives pests

all the food they need in one place,

allowing them to quickly multiply.

Instead, intersperse ornamental

plants among your vegies and herbs.

Artichokes look great bursting out

of a flowering border, and garlic chives

also make for excellent edging.

When planting a vegetable patch, try

to replicate a rainforest as this will get

the best out of each plant – bigger

plants, such as tomatoes, can form

a canopy for more shade-resistant

varieties, such as lettuce, below.

Don’t let pests take over your vegie

patch – give ’em the flick withYours

garden guruCHARLIE ALBONE’s tips

Fly byes

to shoo off bugs

Work with what you’ve got

You’ll need to call in the bug cavalry to

fight the most common pests, such as

aphids, mealy bugs and cabbage moths,

so build yourself a bug hotel. It

can easily be made from twigs,

bricks and stones found around

the home and garden to create

place for beneficial insects to

helter, especially during the

old of winter and the heat of

ummer. And if you can entice

lue-tongued lizards into the

arden, you’ll never have a snail

r slug problem again, so make

ure you have water around.

With ground troops sorted

or accommodation, you’ll also

enefit from airborne support.

lying insects, including wasps, will

lso prey on your pests but you need to

ure them in by providing landing pads,

o plant umbrella-shaped flowers or

looms that naturally spread out. Dill

and parsley work well, as do carrots

if left in the ground over winter and

allowed to flower the following season.

Set a trap!

Pests such as beetles, slugs

and snails like to shelter

under big, broad objects,

so cover your traps with

big pieces of bark or even

cardboard. Check your

traps regularly and remov

the dead nasties – dispose

of them however you see

I’ve also had varied level

with setting beer traps to bait snails

and slugs – apparently they find the

smell and taste irresistible and drown

as they gorge on the amber nectar. Not

a bad way to go, I suppose!

Plant friends together

Companion planting is another handy

method you can adopt in your battle

against pests. This is when you place

certain species next to each other to

gain maximum yields, such as planting

matoes together – the

basil deters whiteflies,

to hornworms, aphids,

seflies and asparagus

tles. The partnership’s

thought to make the

atoes taste better!

other great example

panion planting is

asturtiums in with your

re attracted to yellow

flowers, so if you get yellow flowering

nasturtiums you’ll find aphids flock to

them over all your other plants. The

Under the cloche

Mix flowers with vegies

Blue-tongued

lizard

Tomato and basil