G'day and welcome to ezine 5.
In this ezine I cover a range of topics that I hope you will find helpful, entertaining and educational. We start with how to deal with garden pests that you may find on your daylilies .
Please enjoy.

Scott Alexander.

DAYLILY PESTS - APHIDS, SPIDER MITES & THRIPS  
 
Aphids 
We had quite a number of calls and letters from our clients in April/May, and then again in early September, asking what sprays to use to get rid of “something” down in the centre of the foliage - in other words, the tiny, almost transparent aphids and their discarded skins. Or, if there is a very heavy infestation, there will be a sticky mess and possibly a lot of ants. Follow this link to view images:
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_dictionary/aphids.html

The simplest and cheapest way to get rid of aphids is to dump soapy water on them. Either make up some soapy water using laundry soap, or save some of the water from your washing machine.  You may have to repeat this several times but that’s a lot better for you and the environment than using toxic insecticides.

There’s one thing that aphids just love to do - and that is to infest plants that are either struggling to grow well in their present environment, or are “overfed” with too much manure and/or chemical fertilisers.

In July I spotted some very messy, sickly-looking, and obviously neglected daylilies growing on banks around one of our local churches in some rock-hard soil.  Hardly an ideal situation for the daylilies I had donated to them about 10 years ago!  All of them were heavily infested with aphids and I would imagine they would all eventually die back to the crown unless someone followed my advice and took the time to spray some soapy water over them once a week.  If nothing is done to remedy the situation I’m quite certain that once the spring rains arrive, these neglected specimens would bounce back and eventually flower and, with the warmer weather, natural predators would re-appear and keep the aphids under control.

Spider mites are not an easy pest to deal with and can retard the growth of a plant. Spider mites are tiny (< .5mm), rust-coloured insects that have piercing/sucking mouth parts. They suck the fluids from leaves and stems, robbing plants of essential nutrients. Plants become weak and their leaves may drop.Indoors, spider mites thrive in the warm, dry environment.  Follow this link to view images:  http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_dictionary/spider_mites.html

Spider mites are so difficult to see because they live on the undersides of the leaves and are tiny little devils. The insecticides that can kill off the adults are very poisonous and often don’t destroy the eggs. Spider mites DON”T LIKE wet conditions so if you live in areas where there are watering restrictions you won’t be able to blast the under-surface of the leaves with your hose – a method I usually recommend to get rid of them!

I suggest you use an organic solution - Green Harvest recommend the use of Pest Oil at a 2% solution which can smother the mites and mite eggs. Natra-soap has also been found to be effective if repeated applications are made. For further information about these products go to: www.greenharvest.com.au

There is another solution, but this won’t work overnight!  When plants are fed a well-balanced nutrient rich food such as mature compost, liquid fish and seaweed, and regular small feeds of a well balanced organic fertiliser, they grow leaves that insects do not like. But, give them some “fast food" and you’ll attract lots of insects to their tasty leaves.  When I recommend liquid fish to people who ring in, I frequently hear  “Oh yes. I do that - I use Charlie Carp.”  But unfortunately, Charlie Carp is far from organic.

While it’s a very noble thing the manufacturers are doing in harvesting carp from the inland rivers, there isn’t enough goodness in them on their own to make much of a difference to your plants or the soil so nitrogen has been added ( probably Urea) to produce a fertiliser that has a nitrogen component of 9-10%. The highest percentage nitrogen (N) in fish fertiliser that I’m aware of is in an organic product I use which is 6.5% N.  If you have plenty of Charlie Carp on hand, I suggest you dilute it well and use as a foliar spray.  A misting of it under and over the leaves every 3 months will give you nice green leaves, but I recommend that you DON’T pour lots of it on the soil around the plants because too much could knock out some of the beneficial organisms in your soil.

Thrips - these pests are often talked about but seldom seen because of their very small size and the fact that they spend a lot of time concealed between leaves and in flowers. But not all thrips are bad - follow this link for more information.
http://www.daylilies.org/ahs_dictionary/thrips.html

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