Insects in the Glasshouse

[Hester]

I've noticed this week that the glasshouse resident insects are about. The snails creep in all year around and I deal to them with Quash-safe and effective. Sometimes there are a few cockroaches that make a nuisance of themselves by nibbling plants and paper labels. The ants try to set up residence too. I don't encourage any of these and use organic methods of control if I need to. There are a few aphids and whitefly, but they are mostly on the Nasturtiums that self seed in the soil under the glasshouse shelves.The aphids always appear in Spring-I've learnt not to panic. I don't get rid of all the aphids because soon the predator insects arrive and deal to them. I start to see black aphid bodies and I know that the parasitic wasps have been visiting. Ladybirds will appear in a while too. If I don't have any aphids there won't be anything for the predators to eat. It takes a few years of using an organic regime before the predator numbers build up and the garden come back to a balance between predators and prey. There are lots of welcome insects as well. There are always spiders in the 'attic' and I leave them alone. They help control the population of other insects and stay in their hideyholes when I'm around. The new seasons Preying Mantises have appeared. After 8 years of organic management we have a huge population of mantises. Each autumn they leave their egg cases all over the property. The babies have hatched and are still quite small. But there is at least one on every larger plant in the glasshouse. Preying Mantises don't discriminate between beneficial (to us) insects and pests-they eat them all. But the babies eat up white fly, aphids and anything else smaller than them ,that moves. I have Lavender plants growing outside the glasshouse door, Roses, Borage and Calendulas around the outside walls and I usually have a few flowers, like Marigolds (tagetes) and Nasturtiums, inside the glasshouse. Bees attracted by the flowers, fly in through the open glasshouse doorway and windows to pollinate the vegetable flowers. I'd love to have lizards and frogs too but the other visitors to the glasshouse are feline so they wouldn't stand a chance. What do you have living in your glasshouse?

[Vicki Hill]

Hi! We are very new to vege gardening and recently converted a tiny shed into a greenhouse which I now germinate all my seeds in and I'm having wonderful successes yay! I noticed a white cabbage butterfly got caught in there a week or so ago and was quite pleased, thinking that the little blighter would get stuck and die in there instead of bothering my brassicas. I didn't think much of it when I started seeing a few more ... silly, ignorant me. Last count there were about 1 dozen of the wretched things in there and I realised they are laying eggs on convovulus that is creeping under the film! Much to my delight though, at the same time I noticed the half eaten leaves, I also noticed a very small, brightly coloured wasp (?not like any wasp I've seen before) pick up a caterpillar and fly away with it - double yay! I had read about wasps feeding the caterpillars to their young and assume this is what had happened, right before my eyes. My only concern is that I have two young kiddies who enjoy the gardening with me - should I be worried about them being around these wasps or are they not nasty stingers like the larger wasps I'm familiar with? On another happy note, I found an unusual and beautiful spider that has taken up residence in one of my seeding brassicas and she seems to enjoy me dropping the odd caterpillar in her web :)

[Richard Watson]

I have the native jumping spider in my tunnelhouse that control any white fly and aphids,though i havn't seen any of those for ages,i only have slugs that a pain in the *^* at certain times of the year.

[Rana]

You area seems warmer than mine(Hamilton) All I have is a few surviving spiders( in lesser numbers than in summer), 2 or 2 cockroaches and a few snails. The ants a fewer than b4 too but are on the increase.