Good Bugs and Not-So-Good Bugs

Lyttleton gardens is visited by many bugs thanks to our wonderful variety of annual flowers, perennial flowers, and flowering herbs. Most bugs are an absolute joy to have, but as you know some can be a bit of a challenge in the vegetable garden: white butterflies love our cabbages, as you can see in the gorgeous photo below. Our tactic is to try and confuse them with strong smelling herbs such as feverfew, sage, oregano and thyme. This tactic only tends to work if you harvest or rub the leaves frequently.

Another challenge we have is snails! Our snails are bold: they come out in broad daylight to chomp on our beautiful veggies. We have been very successful at hand-picking and feeding them to neighbouring chooks and ducks.

We also undertook an intensive two-day caterpillar hunt to protect our tomatoes a few weeks ago, and that has kept populations to a manageable level: enough to attract predators but not enough to decimate our plants and tomato harvest.

Always remember: what is the first thing you need to attract aphid predators in your garden? Well... aphids of course! 

One of our red cabbages at Lyttleton Gardens