Stumped?: Gardening Q&AsGardening advice This article is more than 14 years oldIs there any way to deter ants from eating my strawberry plants?
This article is more than 14 years oldI always look forward to the fruit from my strawberry plants, but ants always beat me to it. Is there any way I can deter them?
This will seem a daft question, but have you actually seen the ants at it? OK, you have seen huge holes in your strawberries, and ants crawling about inside munching away, but they didn't start it. Ants alone don't have the wherewithal to breach a strawberry's defences; they are opportunistic, and move in on rots and slug damage. Take care of the slugs and rots, and the ants will be frustrated. Place straw under the fruits to prevent contact with wet ground, and apply organic Advanced Slug Killer pellets (from organiccatalog.com) or water in Nemaslug nematodes, from greengardener.co.uk.
Last year my rosemary was decimated by a splendid looking green and red striped beetle. I bought a new plant, but the beetles are back, and it's on the way out. What are they, and what can I do?
This fiendish beauty is rosemary leaf beetle, a native of the Mediterranean that is well ensconced in the London area and spreading outwards fast. There was some hope that, being a southern softie, it would be batted sideways by our cold winter, but your experience suggests otherwise. The larvae and adults simply chomp away on the leaves until the plant is dead. There are both organic and chemical insecticides available, but this being an edible plant, and one that is so attractive to bees, it's best not to use either. Vigilant picking off and despatching of the adults will keep the damage to a low level.
For years I've had a patch of small, bright green leaves in my lawn. No chemical works. If I dig it out and leave even one leaf, it grows again.
This is Soleirolia soleirolii, known as mind-your-own-business, presumably because it doesn't. You could just leave it: in damp, shady places it does better than any lawn grass. Or, as it is just a patch, deal with it as if you were re-turfing. Cut spade-sized rectangles of turf, then use your foot to slide the spade under, severing turf from soil, before putting it on a tarpaulin. Replace with new turf. Lawn weedkillers won't kill S. soleirolii, but glyphosate-based ones will, especially if you stamp on the leaves first. But it's nasty stuff that also kills the grass, and anything else it touches.
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