Grasshoppers on my mint!

I planted a moderately grown mint plant, from a punnet sold from my local nursery, in one of my back gardens the other week. I bought it because the mint plant that I have in a different garden bed at the front of the house, has been in for about six months now and is at least growing, but is becoming a little straggly and seems to have a lot more stem and diminished leaf growth. So I thought a second plant would just help to keep our supply up!

But alas, the back garden plant, the new one, has succumbed significantly to a blight of tiny green grasshoppers. They are everywhere. The plant leaves looks skeletal! I mean all it has left is literally the veins in the leaf and the main stems. I hardly recognised it as the mint plant I put in only a few weeks back! Terrible news.

People talk of controlling grasshoppers by just going around squishing the things and I have generally done this. But goodness, I wouldn't know where to begin and the grasshoppers that are on this plant in the hundreds (probably) are tiny. They are nymphs (babies) and each one would be less than half a centimetre in length.

I think sadly due to the extent of damage this plant has received, it is a lost cause. But certainly interesting to observe where plants do and don't do so well in your garden and apparently this garden bed isn't great for mint. I suspect the soil nutrients in the garden bed I planted the mint in weren't up to the task, due to my lack of preparation to the soil and my "I'll just chuck it in and see how it goes" mentality at the moment.

Anyway, good learning curve and see how the rest of the plants in that bed deal with the next door neighbour's "pest" problem and whether any of them succumb or whether the mint will take one for the team and the grasshoppers will move somewhere else once they finish on my mint plant. Pin It

Singapore Daisy...what a pest!

Weed control is an ongoing battle at our place and one of the battles that I fear we will face for many years to come is one against the invasive weed, Singapore Daisy.











Singapore Daisy, is an introduced pest in Queensland, with it originally coming from tropical America. It is a hardy and vigorous groundcover and I understand it is quite difficult to eradicate. It has a sea of yellow flowers during spring and summer and is known to spread from cuttings and prunings and just through rampant growth.

Currently Singapore Daisy is a Class 3 declared pest in Queensland, which does not require landholders to treat this species on their property, but does prevent people from releasing such species without a permit.

For me, this is terrible as all I have to prevent an ocean of Singapore Daisy from entering my property is a flimsy fence (see photo to right). This ocean is a significant infestation along my northern boundary. My southern boundary neighbours don't seem to have as much of a problem with this plant, but it is certainly present as individual plants. From investigations so far, it seems that most of my property is free of it, except for the occasional plant in the vicinity of the boundary fence and in the moister areas at the bottom of the hill.

My current plan of attack is pulling out the runners as they creep through the fences in the hope that I can control the tip spread. I also make sure that the bits I rip out of my ground go straight into the garbage bin to ensure the tips don't take hold somewhere else on our property (no compost action for this plant).

My best strategy I believe will be to either convince my neighbours to undertake a herbicide treatment in the areas of infestation, particularly on the northern boundary, and then replant with a suitable replacement species to ensure no soil loss once the Singapore Daisy groundcover "retreats". Alternatively, ask them if I can treat their land.

The Department of Primary Industries (DPI) recommends the use of metsulfuron-methyl (herbicide) at 10g per 100L of water plus a wetting agent. I will try to discover some non-chemical treatment methods to control this species, but I suspect given it has taken hold so well I will have to resort to traditional treatment methods.

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Fruit fly trap

I recently built a non-chemical fruit fly trap and I have had some success reducing the number of fruit flies buzzing around my place, so I thought I should share it with you all.

I made the trap because I was suffering from an overload of fruit flies around my worm farm.  I have been known to overfeed my worms and give them too many fruit scraps, creating a perfect environment for fruit flies to breed in. This didn't really bother me except for the cloud of fruit flies that would swirl around my head when I opened my worm farm.

After a quick internet search, I discovered vinegar is a solution that fruit flies are attracted to. Makes sense really, since vinegar is similar smelling to the rotting fruit in my worm farm. I then just had to find a suitable container to hold the vinegar, whilst also not attracting my toddler to tip the vinegar everywhere or minimise the amount spilt if she did decide to tip the container upside. My solution was an old plastic "jar". I filled the bottom of the container with white vinegar (about 1/10) and then drilled some holes in the lid. The holes were large enough for the fruit flies to fly in. I then just sat this container on top of my worm farm. Voila!

With this solution I have definitely managed to reduce the number of fruit flies in and around my worm farm. There are still some fruit flies floating around, which is just because I still have rotting fruit in my worm farm, but certainly numbers have decreased significantly and not worrying me at all.

This system does require some maintenance, but not very much though. I have to replace the vinegar every 2-3 weeks. I just chuck out all of the old vinegar and dead fruit flies and then add new white vinegar in the bottom of the container. This is cheap solution and has minimised my environmental footprint, as I have used products around my house (old container), will require very little input over time (just the new white vinegar) and uses no harsh chemicals. No off the shelf product required for me. Hope this solution works for you as well! Pin It

Weed wash down

Weeds are significant issues across Australia and I often think about what the country would look like with intact vegetation and no lantana or the many other weeds that are invading natural bushlands and in some cases smothering them. 

There are numerous pieces of legislation which outline declared pests. Here in Queensland, we have the Land Protection (Pest and Stock Route Management) Act. Local councils also quite regularly identify lists of environmental weeds, these are usually invasive species that are non-native but widespread and unlikely to be completely removed from Australia without significant effort and investment. 

Weed control in your own patch of land is important, but where opportunities present themselves it is important to undertake weed seed spread prevention methods where available. I came across a public wash down facility when I was in North Queensland a couple of years back. 

 

I thought this was a great initiative but I don't think many other drivers on the road where even aware of the facility (it wasn't mandatory and you almost had to know it was there to see it) and certainly didn't seem to be using it. Therefore it probably wasn't very effective at this location, but you never know.

Here is a photo of the wash down facility in action. 

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In Tune with Nature

To become more in tune with the land, seasons and opportunities for food growing, energy and water capture and the changes in wildlife and weeds in my life and the land I occupy, I am going to start an observation journal. 


What will this entail?


Recording:

• date
• season
• weather - temperature, rainfall, cloud cover, etc
• what is in flower/fruit - food, native and weed plants
• what is happening on the land

and anything else that takes my fancy. 


Overtime, I hope to collect a picture of the patterns in the landscape, what I will need to be doing on the land, what to expect from my food plants and identify things that are out of place or sorts.


I am looking forward to learning from this process.  Pin It

Cats......do my head in!

Today I was outside with my toddler and I heard something a bit out of the ordinary outside from front gates. It was a bird making a strange noise. My brain finally kicked into geared, opened the gate, just to see the next-door neighbour's cat with a figbird in its mouth! Arrrrrgggghhh!

I ran out of the gate and told the cat to drop it. The cat just looked disdainfully at me and jumped over the neighbour's fence into their backyard. No doubting the cat certainly had a tasty meal!

Cats whether they are loved pets or ferals running the neighbourhood are often responsible for the death of much of our native wildlife, particularly in the suburbs. If you have a cat:

• make sure it is kept inside at night;
• has a bell around its neck;
• if you can afford it invest in a cat run, so your friendly moggy is keep completely separate from the native wildlife that makes our suburbs a little more friendly.

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Cane toads

This evening I have been out in my backyard catching cane toads to tastefully dispose of them. These creatures are not welcome in my yard. I try and maintain some sort of island home within my backyard for as much native fauna as possible. Cane toads are a definite threat to the viability of many native species and if they don't directly impact on native fauna they outcompete them for resources. As such I choose to collect cane toads from my back yard and dispose of them.

Some of you might ask how exactly I do this. Well it is a matter of me going around with a plastic bag (yes those yucky plastic bags) collecting the cane toads by hand and then placing them into the fridge or directly into the freezer for a hibernating type demise in my electrical appliance. Once these creatures are frozen I then just place them into my garbage bin.

Tonight I collected 4 cane toads with little effort. I'm sure there are probably a few more lurking in the dim corners of my yard, but the batteries in my torch weren't very powerful tonight, so only the obvious ones were collected. Off to the land of nod for these four at least.

If you're wondering, cane toads are an introduced pest to Queensland and Australia. They were purposefully introduced to Queensland as a biological control agent to control pests within cane fields. The problem for Australia was that we apparently offered a smorgasbord of target insects, etc for the cane toad and they rapidly bred and forgot about the insect they were suppose to prey upon in the canefields and now have taken up residence across most of Queensland, into the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales. The expansion of and the number of cane toads in Australia is likely to see them now as permanent residents, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and do our bit to minimise or stabilise the population of cane toads within our own areas (in my opinion anyway). Pin It