The sight of young, healthy seedlings eaten to skeletons is always deeply frustrating to gardeners.

Summer brings out the greediest, most destructive pests, especially caterpillars.

White butterfly caterpillars have a special liking for the leaves of brassicas and a few caterpillars can devastate a row of newly planted seedlings.

Those that have managed to survive the winter sheltering in their cocoon usually appear as butterflies in mid-spring.

By January they have started to multiply and within weeks there are millions of them.

Caterpillars can be controlled without poisonous sprays. I use Dipel, a safe form of bacteria that only attacks and kills caterpillars.

The powder is easily dissolved in water for easy spraying over the foliage of vulnerable plants. It sticks to leaves and is not easily washed off by rain or irrigation.

When caterpillars eat Dipel-sprayed leaves they stop feeding and die. I use this stuff to protect all brassicas, especially when young.

With ball-head cabbages it is possible to stop spraying when hearts begin to form.

That’s because caterpillars tend to concentrate only on coarse outer leaves — those we don’t eat — while leaving edible cabbage hearts untouched and intact.

So cabbages that appear to be riddled with caterpillars have usually developed solid, untouched hearts.

Only the tiny diamondback moth caterpillars penetrate deep into cabbages and can be controlled by regular sprays of Dipel.

I should add that most cauliflower curds also remain untouched, mainly because caterpillars stand out clearly on white surfaces so become easy targets for birds.

The same spray can also be used to safely control all caterpillars and grubs attacking other plants, including pear and cherry slugs.

Bugs can be a serious problem in all parts of the garden and the most common during summer are the so-called “stink bugs”, particularly fond of beans, pumpkins, silverbeet, broccoli and tomatoes.

If we disturb or squash them they produce a foul smell. They feed by puncturing the skins of tomatoes, spoiling both flavour and appearance.

They are attracted to developing bean pods and can be seen in great clusters clinging to them as they feed.

When disturbed they instantly drop to the ground and hide.

Unfortunately, these bugs have a water-repellent, waxy covering so are resistant to many sprays.

I deal with them by holding a small bucket or plastic container beneath the clusters so they can be shaken in and collected. It helps if the container contains some water laced with a little household detergent.

This penetrates the defensive wax, gets into the breathing tubes on the sides of their bodies and kills them.

The best time to catch large numbers of green vegetable bugs is in the morning, just after sunrise.

These stinking pests gather together around this time — usually on the sunniest sides of plants — to bask in early morning warmth.

There is another type of bug that attacks an even wider range of plants, including stone fruit. Harlequin bugs are black, each with an orange mark just below its head. They are often seen in breeding pairs with their backsides stuck together.

Harlequin bugs gather each evening and spend the night clustered in their thousands, often on wooden fences or shed walls. They also bask in the early morning sun and this is when they can be successfully sprayed.

I use an extra-strong household detergent mix — just two cups of detergent to half a bucket of water. When sprayed over the massed clusters — always while still clinging to a fence or wall — it wipes them out by the thousand within minutes.

Ants can be serious pests, particularly when they get into homes. Most seem to love sugary foods and can completely ruin a prepared meal.

They can also be seen scurrying up and down citrus trees where they not only feed off the sweet residue produced by scale pests, but actually defend scale colonies from predators.

A simple means of destroying ant nests is by laying toxic baits.

An easy homemade substance is a 50-50 mixture of boron (Borax at your local supermarket) and icing sugar made sticky with a little water.

These sweet baits are best placed close to where ants are most active. The ants quickly swarm over the stuff to take it into their nests.

The boron appears to disrupt their metabolism and certainly puts a stop to invading ants by completely destroying their nests.


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