Garden pests & Diseases
Ways and means to a healthy garden
Is your garden struggling? Black mould on citrus, powdery grey stuff on your Rhododendrons, borer in your Griselinia, codling moth in your apples… or maybe just a bunch of plants you want gone.
First things first
Keep your plants healthy and plant them in the right place. Feed the soil, feed the foliage, and keep an eye on things. If an issue arises then you can figure out how to approach it.
Spraying chemicals is not guaranteed to work. Borer in the Griselinia will often survive and keep on keeping on. Transcantia (commonly called Wandering Willie) may die off and then come straight back!
The do nothing option
Sometimes doing nothing is an option. For example, leaf-curl in plums sometimes goes away after two or three years.
And (this is controversial) we do not recommend any specific, discrete applications of products to correct nutrient deficiencies. It’s hard to get it right. For example, excess calcium could look like a magnesium deficiency - so if you apply Epsom salts the problem could persist or worsen.
Build healthy soils
Farmers get regular soil tests and work with specialists to decide what and when to use to improve their soils. And they still get it wrong! In our opinion, home gardeners should generally just focus on building healthy soils and let nature take care of the rest.
If you do not know what to do then give us a call or go back to the first principles - a healthy plant is a happy plant. Look after your plants well and they are less likely to get problems and overcome them if they do.