Plants are intelligent, says Marcos Bruckeridge of the University of São Paulo’s botany department. He told an interviewer from New Scientist: “We put our brains to work for them, to look after them and water them. So who dominates who? Man or plant?”
These Ontario days, where the minions of law, order and environmental correctness have banished chemical warfare from the pest control palette, we are bashing our brains for alternate answers.
Take the dreaded chinch bug, that feared leveler of lawns. Late this month, through August into September a rapidly expanding brown patch envelops the turf. Within three to five days, the neighbours are wisecracking about hayfields. Government experts admit bafflement. How about pushing a vacuum over the lawn, as suggested by St. Catharines-based radio gardening show host Bruce Zimmerman? Your neighbours will say it sucks. That is before the chinch moves into their lawns . . .
Rather too many outlets that masquerade as “garden centres” appear to unable to distinguish aphids from ants. However, many of Ontario’s real tried and truly green garden centres carry solutions from Natural Insect Controls (NIC).
Aphids are not only a serious pest in themselves but also vectors of perhaps 80 per cent of virus diseases. NIC offer predators such as ladybugs and Aphiodoletes, lures to attract ladybugs, natural deterrents and neem, a natural, organic spray.
Grubs and leatherjacket larvae infesting your lawn? NIC supplies beneficial nematodes, minute predacious worms that feast these pests and, so they claim, 250 others.
Yellow jacket wasps have natural deterrents such as imitation nests. Or if a nest is already established, station a trap, complete with bait and lure, away from the patio or deck as the pesticide-free answer.
NIC has many other effective answers to insect problems and, despite the name, slugs, snails, spider mites and other garden nuisances. Check out [url=http://www.naturalinsectcontrol.com]http://www.naturalinsectcontrol.com[/url].
You have been weighed in balance and found wanton, a friend once mused. Balancing against natural controls, as Tony Di Giovanni, executive director of Landscape Ontario pointed out in a recent conversation, is that there is no authorative body in control of claims or application advice.
Mr. A. E. McKenzie started Canada’s well-known seed business 113 years ago, so the good folks there should know something about gardening. Visit [url=http://www.mckenzieseeds.com]http://www.mckenzieseeds.com[/url] for down-to-earth advice on pest control, growing techniques, gardening safety, living colour and a products section along with a forum to connect with other green thumbers across the country. You can even let the kids browse the area called the Grow Zone and draw them into the wonderful world of flowers and vegetable growing.
One thing that Natural Insect Control or McKenzie does not proffer: how to stop dogs using the front lawn as a urinal. No longer it is permissible to post prominent signs announcing (true or otherwise) that the grass has recently been sprayed with a supposedly toxic chemical.
Likewise a similar warning spotted in a mid-Toronto front landscape of a poodle hold up a tombstone inscribed with: “Here lies that last dog that urinated on my lawn” seems a trifle harsh. More effective perhaps is posting the advice and request: “This lawn does not flush. Please drain your dog elsewhere.”
Continuing on the subject of lawn signs, we have to thank Christina Babcock for informing us of one claimed posted on the lawn at a drug rehab centre that supposedly said: “Keep off the Grass.” And Don Harron’s alter ego Charlie Farquharson, tired of speeding cars, set up one reading “Go Slow. Nudist Camp.”
Britain’s The Daily Telegraph also sports a weekly feature of signs from around the world submitted by readers. Several recently caught our eye such as “In the backside big panoramic garden” outside a restaurant in Tuscany, submitted by Bernard Wallwork; “Caution slow moving plant” a roadside sign in County Cork, Ireland, submitted by Sean Higgins; “We can’t stand the sight of mattress fragrant grass” from China, submitted by Willy Kwan; and, closer to home and ominously, from Canada, submitted by Bruce Coatta: “Any person (except players) caught collecting golf balls on this course will be prosecuted and have their balls removed.” Ouch!
The past clammy, cool spring much favoured lawns. U.S. meteorologists suggest an El Niño may be forming over the Pacific. This could yield a wetter summer than normal they say. Also more Eastern Pacific hurricanes and fewer Atlantic hurricanes, should you be contemplating visiting gardens down south or on the islands of the Caribbean.
Elsewhere amongst the chattering class, going green is all the rage these days. Unfortunately for magazine publishers hoping to cash in with special “green” issues a survey has revealed that over half of these resulted in fewer readers than regular issues. Alex Mindlin, writing in The New York Times, blames Al Gore for what he designates as “the current spate of ‘green’ magazine issues. “
Equally lacking in success was the response of a Shanghai twitter to North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’ also becoming a twit. A lack of response greeted his/her suggestion to kcna_dprk: “Make kimchi, not war!” Kimchi, for occidentals unfamiliar with Korean cuisine, is the oriental equivalent of sauerkraut, or a fermented, # cabbage.
Should you accept advise from one of those temporary garden centres that sprout, like mushrooms on the lawn, in spring only to disappear about Canada Day? An attendant was overheard at one such assuring an all too obviously new gardener that the fruit on a bedraggled 10-inch pot of tomato were split because they were “over-ripe.” Tomato fruit split when the plants are allowed to dry, then hastily watered, the kind of care all to common at such outlets.
Women’s voices make tomato plants grower faster, according to experiments conducted by Britain’s Royal Horticultural Society at their Wisley Gardens near London. Women’s voices sped up growth of tomato plants much more than men’s. In an experiment run over a month, they found that tomato plants grew up to 2-inches taller if serenaded by the dulcet tones of a female rather than a male, reports The Daily Telegraph, BBC News and The Globe and Mail. The most effective talk came from Sarah Darwin, whose great-great grandfather was Charles Darwin. She read a passage from On the Origin of Species, beating out 9 other ‘voices’ including passages from John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids and William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Less welcome from the other side of the Atlantic is the invading European fire ant. According to experts, one way that the wretched alien is spreading to new areas of North America is by people moving flowerpots concealing the little reddish-brown stinging brutes. A simple trick to prevent them – and other unwanted invaders – is by fitting a small section of nylon fly screen in the bottom of all containers. Now he tells us!
