Caterpillars

When it comes to caterpillars, I know that I am meant to hate the Cabbage White (Pieris rapae, if you will), as it does so much damage, however I heard recently on the news that some species of butterfly are becoming rare and I don't want to be part of a mass extinction movement. I have thought about finding info on caterpillars, though I haven't really tried that hard, I mean I haven't 'Googled' it, looked for a book or anything, but last night on the BBC Gardening message board there was the answer, just waiting for me.

Kindly, a certain 'David K' had passed on this website, which helps to identify caterpillars and has plates which shows them and the plants they are usually found on, good info to have I thought. So I too shall share.....
http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/plates.htm

By actually taking the time, I have now found (by myself) The Butterfly Conservation Website
http://www.butterfly-conservation.org/
so by checking what caterpillars we have and looking them up we can save the rare ones. Thus allowing us to get up on that high moral seat and feel smug. Lovely.

Cabbages and Caterpillars

Fluency evades my fingertips - I have been (and still am) in the throes of a panic attack today. I've been doing so well the past few days that it seems to hurt me all the more and the sun is out too. Forgive my ramblings but I need to occupy myself with something and blogging is what I have chosen; the TV is too annoying and I can't think well enough to read - housework?, well it can go to hell.

So, when we got home from our wonderful wedding trip to Leuven, Andrew took a couple of days off. We, of course, went straight to the plot at the earliest convenience. Damn Caterpillars had been at it again while we were away. Our lovely young cabbages had been attacked; well the battle had begun but I think we'll win the war! Both the Pak Choi and the Cabbages had some damage, only a little but the culprits were there and look what can happen....

The one on the right isn't ours (they have yet to get anywhere near that size), but that of another tenant in our field; it's just been destroyed.

I have no mercy now when it's between us and them - we grew the food, it's ours, therefore I shall not put up with caterpillars (except those on 'chrysalis watch') or indeed slugs anymore! War has been declared. And thus after the blighters had been picked and squished by Andrew I also added slug pellets - tactics; prevention is the key.

As for 'Chrysalis Watch', well, I'm afraid we have lost 'too', he's gone. However that pain soon died when I discovered 4 new ones in the shed. They are different than the first two, in that they were green, these are black and yellow. Some of them are still there but believe me, they are going - I have a phobia of butterflies for goodness sake and don't want a whole load of them attacking me one day when I open the shed up. So from now on it will just be the one, the original Chrysalis that gets to live and be appreciated. I did take a photo but to be honest it looks exactly the same as the last one I took - I'm beginning to think this isn't a interesting sideline at all!

A warm hearted killer?

This is the 1st of a few posts about the lottie from this weekend. So stay posted.

Ok, there was mass destruction of my Alchemilla Mollis and the Redcurrant bush by blasted caterpillars. The green ones with the thin yellow stripe (Cabbage Whites?). I picked them all off, believe me it took a long time, there were so many and many, many baby ones too. I put them in the bucket with all my weeding and thought, "there, munch away" but then I got nasty...They all ended up in the compost bin, with the weeds. Our compost bin is roasty toasty at the mo (more on that later) so the idea was, treat them like Lobsters. By this I mean lull them to sleep/death. I think this is a pretty kind way to treat my nemeses; they get to eat as much as they can, feel all cosy and safe and then DIE! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Slugs and Snails and catepillars...

It's not often I get near any of the bugs on our plot; Andrew is very effective at 'disposing' of them - he is in fact generally, a heartless bug killer. But yesterday in our front garden I noticed a snail (which is still alive somewhere) and had a thought... Maybe I'm mad, but in Paris people pay good money to eat these delightful, slimy, squidgy things and I'm no expert but are snails not slugs with fancy shells on their backs??? My idea therefore is an EU initiative wherein allotment holders can gather up their slugs, ship them off to Paris as 'food' and make a profit out of the blighters. Et voila, dinner, Escargots, and you don't even need to hoke them out of their fiddly shells.

On the other hand there is something delicious in seeing this...
Dead. Gone. Succumbed to the lovely blue pellet on the soil.

Slug : "What is that? it's a pretty colour, I wonder does it taste nice, ummm, no!

Carrie: "Ha ha! Got you, you blighter".

Don't judge me!!


Ohhhh, we found this cool caterpillar. We have no idea what it is but it was so weird and special to us that even Andrew was persuaded to let it live, though in the hedgerow, not in our plot. Look at it up close - there's hairs and red bits and a horn thing. Cool!

All the other cabbage white caterpillars that we have had, never got a chance to be photographed and viewed by the world - Andrew, need I say more?

On a really positive note, we have millions of worms on our plot, no need for a photo of them, we all know what a worm looks like, eh? Some of them are so big! I choose to believe that if you cut one in half (accidentally!) it turns into two worms and I won't hear anyone say otherwise.

We also found a lot of ladybirds everywhere, they did a fantastic job on the green aphids etc and they're so pretty. It had been a while since I'd seen one, now they're all over the place. This is interesting, a ladybird larvae, I'd never seen one of these before. This picture was taken way back in June by the way, so I'm sure he's all grown up by now.