What are the worst pests and diseases on your plot?

[Lucy Halsall]

Hi everyone, we're trying to compile a list of the most troublesome bugs, fungi and general nasties that attack your fruit and vegetables - we'll pop the results in a future issue of Grow Your Own mag. This is a free for all - no poll - just post up your worst offenders and we'll print details of how to control the most popular (or unpopular!) ones in a future issue.

Many thanks in advance for your help!


Ed

[Barking Postlethwaite]

The worst pest or disease is undoubtedly the one your plot has never suffered from before. Until now. When you're unprepared and it's too late to get your defences up.

Never suffered from it before other than as a very minor irritant but this season flea beetle has ravaged my turnips and radish. Some have struggled on manfully, but whole rows of Snowball turnips have pretty much vanished overnight. I hope this infestation will disappear as quickly as it came for next year.

Also on a completely different scale to usual has been pigeons. They are everywhere (it's like an outtake from The Birds round here some afternoons). I normally have to net brassicas, but this time they've gone for just about everything - beetroot leaves have been stripped, the growing tips of radicchio taken out and they've even uprooted leeks !!!!! There are limits to how much twine and shiny CDs I can hang about the allotment to deter them.

On the plus side slugs (usually the bane of my growing life) have been much less active this season, presumably due to the dry weather.

[Nicos]

Pests?
Mine are voles and blackfly ,sawfly, and this year for the first time flea beetle.
A fox cub has munched it's way through a lot of our strawberries too!

Problem is, I don't want to net and mesh everything as the veg plots are incorporated into our garden and they would look really ugly.

Diseases-
apple and pear scab year in year out.Also sooty blotch.
And every year peach leaf curl which sometimes affects the plum trees.


It'd be nice to know alternative prevention/treatments apart from chemical control if possible??
Nice idea for an article!

[WPG]

Worst pest - Pea and bean weevil - we use clover as an overwintering green manure but I think it's probably providing a nice home for the weevils too as they seem to be multiplying each year.

Worst diseases - rust on the alliums and powdery mildew on the courgettes

[ButternutSquash]

Pea and bean weevil have decimated some of my mange touts. Aphids and blackfly are perhaps the other pest, lots of aphids on the blackcurrants. Blight wiped out my vine tomatoes last September. There are already touches of mildew on the courgette.

[Bren In Pots]

Worst pest was cats but that's sorted now by netting all my beds next its slugs and snails I use organic pellets, egg shells, bran and the odd beer trap but would love something that really stops them in their tracks.

[SAS-who dares grows]

Strawberries: SLUGS, so I put slug traps down; ANTS, so I put ant traps down; BIRDS, so I cover them in nets; RATS/MICE, so I lay bait traps down; MOLES, so I buy an ultra sonic ground spike; THE WIFE, divorce is imminent! grrrrr!


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[fishpond]

Wood Ants & Black Fly at present, until predators start breeding in greater numbers.

[Penellype]

Slugs and snails, deterred by copper tape, copper matting, nematodes
Blackbirds, kept off soft fruit with netting/fruit cage
Cabbage white caterpillars, kept off brassicas with veggiemesh
Silver Y moth caterpillars, kept off as much as possible with veggiemesh
Cat, kept off soil with pointed sticks
Aphids, targetted with ladybirds when available
Carrot fly, kept off carrots with veggiemesh
Pea moth - trying growing nasturtiums as companion plants
Raspberry beetle - no solution found
Vine weevil - treated with nematodes

Blight, devastating for tomatoes, no solution found (growing potatoes in bags seems to help)
Powdery mildew on courgettes, worst in pot grown plants, no solution found

[Martin H]

This year, slugs and snails are as bad as they can be. Also
- flea beetles have taken almost all my radish and direct-sown brassicas
- Rust hit my garlic severely and my onions a bit.

So for me it's a three way tie for worst pest. But if the potato blight kicks in over the next week it could well trump them all!

[Two_Sheds]

The worst pests on our site are, sadly, ex-committee members, who harbour a years-long grudge against the new committee members, and inflict random acts of vandalism on peoples' plots (and on mine, and I aren't on the committee). When nobody's watching, they snoop round the site, pulling up plants and spraying weedkiller
The new committee say their hands are tied, because nobody's actually caught them 'in the act'

[RaptorUK]

Asparagus beetle . . . I started picking them off one by one and crushing them . . . then after not doing this for a few days the remainder called in their friends, I had to spray to save my plants.

Rust is my worst disease, had it on my Garlic now on mt leeks.

[Penellype]

The worst pests on our site are, sadly, ex-committee members, who harbour a years-long grudge against the new committee members, and inflict random acts of vandalism on peoples' plots (and on mine, and I aren't on the committee). When nobody's watching, they snoop round the site, pulling up plants and spraying weedkiller
The new committee say their hands are tied, because nobody's actually caught them 'in the act'

How depressing

[Bill HH]

My biggest problem is mildew, I have lost courgettes, cucumbers and peas before, the so called solutions of baking soda or milk just don't seem to work for me. The other is Blight in potatoes (In bags) and then I get it in the tomatoes too. This year I have changed to resistant varieties in hope, but they are not the varieties I want to grow. The other pest are my children who seem to think my only purpose in life is to supply them with free veg which of course I would happily do if I had enough but I don't. Found myself buying carrots cos they had had mine. But I love em.

[Mikey]

I think the worst pest on my plot is me.

I struggle and fight, while all the other owners, slugs, snails, worms, mice, pigeons, blackbirds, butterflies, moths, bees, wasps and many others have to suffer in silence. They can frequently be seen discussing in corners about me, what is he up to now, or not again. I wonder if they'll ever accept me, maybe one day.