Wednesday 7 May 2008

BUG CENTRAL

I found this great website, called Bug Central, thanks to the Cwm Goch Chronicles blog, in Western Australia, near Perth.....
"Not that type of Bugs, Kate! This is meant to be serious"
"OK, sorry, keep your shirt on!"


Bug Central was launched in Adelaide in October 2004 to provide a range of products and services to reduce the use of pesticides in home gardens around Australia. The company provides a number of good bugs that control common garden pests. For example, I have trillions of white fly and I could have sent off for some (native) lacewing larvae before the numbers got so big, which would hatch and consume bucket-loads of white fly, thereby keeping them under control. Lacewings are also predators for aphids.

This is a very effective and env. -friendly way of dealing with a pest problem if you think your garden is not yet able to counter the attack of certain pests. I find that the white fly in my garden mostly hang around on older plants which I reckon are able to survive the attack long enough for numbers of lacewings to increase and keep things in balance....I am, however, still waiting and a little disappointed that my efforts to provide habitat for such insects as the lacewings do not seem to be as good as I had thought. Bring on the cold of winter and this will see the end of both these pests pretty quickly.

4 comments:

Maggie said...

Thanks for this link, Bug Central must be local, their postcode is Fullarton!

Rachel said...

Thanks for this link! The white fly in my tiny (courtyard) kitchen garden have been driving me crazy - it's like someone threw a handful of fine confetti into the air. But who wants to use sprays on the food one's going to eat!?

BTW, I'm enjoying this site - I wandered on over here from Kitchen Gardens International.

Kate said...

I hope you will come by again, Rachel.I love the sound of your virtual book club - great idea.

Rachel said...

Oh yes - I forgot you can wander around my account that way! I'm Rachel A, fwiw.

I'm a bit embarassed - I haven't participated in the club for two cycles now! Too much going on in the garden, with the almost-3-year-old and with the day job - freelancing!