Blog Posts under "Garden pests"

If you are the owner of a cycad, this is the time of year to keep an eye on the young tender leaves emerging from the crown. If you are seeing damage to the leaves similar to that in the accompanying photo, read on....

Coming from a 50 year old garden where weeds had been all but eradicated, it was something of a shock to take over a garden where 'weeding' meant that you waited until you had an invasion then lightly applied a hoe to chip off the weeds at the base, leaving roots and seeds to lie in wait for the next rainfall, before sprouting and re-sprouting with ever-growing fervour. The adage 'One year's seeding, seven year's weeding' soon came to haunt me as year after year I toiled with no end in sight...

Summer is settling in, we've had good rain, plants are recovering, birds are singing, butterflies are flitting – did I say 'butterflies'?

Butterflies and moths, as innocent as they appear, have a definite sting in the tail. To enjoy their intricate colours, their delicate dips and swings across the sun-kissed garden and their evening hovering among scented blooms, we have to live with their myriad offspring which chomp, chew and generally deface our carefully tended plants, shrubs and...

When I first came to the Eastern Cape I noticed that some of my aloes developed a black rot in the center of the crown and this invariably led to the death of the plant. Initially I thought this was caused by some sort of disease, until I dug a little deeper.