So much goes into making a garden gorgeous. Between pruning, planting, and pest-fighting, it can sometimes feel like a gardener’s work is never done.
But if you regularly tend to your lawn and are still finding that your leaves are damaged, your veggies are eaten by pests, and your tomatoes barely survive the season, there could be a crucial part of your lawn that you’re failing to check.
Watering, mowing, and growing your yard usually focuses on the soil, grass, and fruit or flowers of your plants. But many common pests hide underneath your plant’s leaves – and they can be incredibly hard to spot.
So, we thought we’d share the pests that most commonly hide under plant leaves, how they affect your garden, and how to tackle them.
Bugs that love the underside of your leaves include:
- Spider mites (which are minute, and can be very hard to spot); these injure your grass by draining strands of moisture and nutrients,
- Cabbage caterpillars; these feed on cruciferous plants like cabbage and broccoli, boring a hole through from the surface to the centre, thus ruining the entire plant
- Aphids, which suck the sap out of plants, stunting their growth and sometimes causing disease, and
- Mealybugs, which have more or less the same effect on your garden as aphids. They’re commonly found in greenhouses or on houseplants.
OK, so – how can I check for them?
You might want to think about using the flash on your smartphone to check for bugs and eggs, as some of them (especially spider mites) can be tiny and very hard to spot.
And some bugs, like aphids, also hide on your plant’s stem. Others, like the squash vine borer, attack your stem at the very bottom, boring through it before you even spot them at work. Signs that a squash vine borer has worked its nasty magic on your lawn include a plant that wilts no matter how often you water it, and sawdust-like excrement (lovely) at the very base of the stem.
What can I do if I spot a pest?
It depends on the critter. For spider mites, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) says you might want to consider introducing spider mite predators like rove beetles and predatory midges, which are available by mail order.
For cabbage caterpillars, attracting birds and wasps to your lawn, covering your brassicas with netting, and manually removing bugs and eggs yourself can limit the population, says the RHS.
Aphids can be controlled by, well, squashing them, says the RHS. They add that you can introduce earwigs, ground beetles, and hoverflies to your lawn to cull the pests.
And because mealybugs don’t travel far, removing the entire affected plant might be a wise move, the RHS shared. You should also dispose of affected leaves ASAP.
All of the above should respond to pesticides, too – though the RHS recommends leaving this as a last resort, as even the creatures we don’t like can be crucial to our ecosystem.
And the sooner you spot the populations under your leaves, the easier they’ll be to control.
Don’t mind me, just running out to my garden ASAP...