Supporting you to grow food

Garden Pests

There are a few garden pests that evoke passionate responses from gardeners. Avoiding or controlling these pests can become an obsession bordering on mania. Possums and citrus gall wasp immediately come to mind. However, I’ve recently discovered another garden pest that some gardeners fixate on. The much-dreaded harlequin beetle (Dindymus […]

How to Control Harlequin Beetles (Dindymus versicolor)

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on November 24, 2023 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Peach leaf curl nectarine fungal disease distorted leaves — What is Curly Leaf and what causes it? Leaf Curl in peaches and nectarines can look quite overwhelming, but the tree usually recovers well and produces an abundance of fruit. Leaf Curl (also known as Peach Leaf Curl) is a fungal disease caused by the pathogen Taphrina deformans. It affects […]

Curly Leaf in Peaches and Nectarines

This entry was posted in Garden Pests How to Grow on September 26, 2022 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Hoverflies are great beneficila insects — Our blog post on pest predator dynamics highlighted the importance of treating our gardens as ecosystems. We also looked at “good bugs” and “bad bugs” to highlight the importance of beneficial insects in the garden. Here we identify some great strategies for attracting beneficial insects or “good bugs” into the […]

Garden Ecosystems Part Two: Attracting Beneficial Insects into the Garden

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on August 26, 2019 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Start seeing your outdoor space as an ecosystem rather than a garden The more I learn about edible gardening, the more I learn the importance of bugs in successful gardening. Often, we are too busy concentrating on day to day gardening tasks to see that pest issues come and go […]

Garden Ecosystems Part One: Pest Predator Dynamics and Balance

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on August 20, 2019 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Codling moth can cause significant damage to your apple and pear crops What’s worse than finding a worm in your apple? Half a worm! And that worm is likely to be the larvae of the codling moth (Cydia pomonella). Codling Moth larvae are usually prevalent in apple, pear, nashi and […]

What’s eating my apple? Codling Moth!

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on February 2, 2018 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Hoverflies are in big numbers across Melbourne right now. They are eating aphids. — I bet most of you have noticed huge numbers of hoverflies in the garden recently? Hoverflies look like small bees and they are one of the most beneficial insects to have in the garden. I’ve spent ages watching them in the garden this week. Their larvae are incredible the way […]

Hoverfly populations have exploded across Melbourne to control aphids!

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on October 20, 2016 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

How to control earwigs in Melbourne Gardens — Earwigs are the great decomposers of the garden. Sometimes though, they decompose things that we don’t want them to… like our seedlings! Earwigs are common unwanted visitors to most gardens in Melbourne. They can be quite prevalent in October, which is coincidentally, the time that many of us are looking […]

How to control earwigs in the garden

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on October 4, 2016 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

European Wasp Melbourne — Last week I posted about controlling the damage caused by White Cabbage Moths in the garden. Since then, I’ve gone from removing ten to twenty caterpillars a day from the garden, to now only finding one or two. However, this rapid decrease in numbers has not been entirely due to […]

European Wasp…. Friend or Foe?

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on May 23, 2016 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Autumn planting melbourne white cabbage moth — As I mentioned in our recent newsletter, this autumn I’ve noticed a lot more White Cabbage Butterfly (Pieris rapae) in our gardens than usual. White Cabbage Butterfly lay their eggs on our Brassicas, such as broccoli and cauliflower. Little green caterpillars hatch from these eggs, and then get to work […]

How to Control White Cabbage Butterfly in the Garden

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on May 11, 2016 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

How to control possums melbourne — Possums are the bane of most gardeners, in the leafy inner eastern suburbs of Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell, Malvern, Toorak, Glen Iris and beyond. I frequently get asked the best way to “deal with them”. Here’s my thoughts on the issue and how best to stop them damaging your garden. Why […]

How to Control Possums in Melbourne

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on December 22, 2015 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Powdery white spots on your zucchini leaves are a sure sign of powdery mildew infestation. Here’s what to do about it. This is the vegetable disease that I am asked about the most. Many vegetable plants are prone to powdery mildew. It is quite common for cucumbers, pumpkins and other […]

How to Treat Powdery Mildew

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on February 5, 2015 by Leaf, Root & Fruit

Are you finding that every time you move in the garden you’re being greeted with a cloud of little white or green insects rising up from your precious plants? Don’t be worried, you’re not the only gardener with this problem. Gardens across Melbourne are currently teeming with whitefly. Whitefly are […]

Whitefly control methods

This entry was posted in Garden Pests on November 19, 2014 by Leaf, Root & Fruit