Garden Pictures Chat Corner

Lice oh yes the rhubarb is black, even the tomatoes have some. I sprayed all infested with black tea last week. They are now lice-free, but they are sitting on the others. So today again with black tea. Garlic doesn’t help, I had planted it between the roses. However, the roses cope with the lice.

you should have laid unprinted cardboard on the lawn, then soil on top and done. This way hardly any weeds come through. Coltsfoot is spreading in my vegetable garden. It may be a good host plant for rare butterflies, but it overgrows my freshly sown lettuce.

One of my clematis has fallen victim to clematis wilt.

I decided against the cardboard solution because even supposedly "good" cardboard is still treated (biocides and worse). I had thought about it, it sounds nice too. Lay it out and that's it... Well. Now the grass keeps coming through. In the long run, I'll get it under control, it's just more tedious now. Clematis wilt is also annoying... Especially when the plants have already reached a certain size.

A sweet cherry tree was struggling with aphids... especially the young shoots... The tree is not very big yet, so I treated it with a strong jet of water. It helps somewhat. My second round of spinach also got aphids... interestingly not all the plants. The strawberry harvest is in full swing... 17 kg so far o_O! So far, we have eaten and processed everything. Neighbors were also happy :). Beans and pickling cucumbers still do not want to grow... In the photo, almost 3 kg of strawberries..

We have more lice than last year as well. I especially notice that we have hardly any ladybugs that would eat the lice. That could be a reason for the lice explosion. I once read that the ladybugs only come when the lice have been around for a long time and you should wait for them before unpacking the poison club. But somehow the beneficial insects have probably been exterminated again this year by the farmers around here. There are also no lacewings anywhere around, no parasitic wasps, etc. Am I too impatient?

I have already released the first batch of ladybug larvae. But I haven't seen any beetles myself yet... Maybe I'll just order some more.

May beetles and June beetles we usually had more often too - nothing. All dead. :(:oops::confused: