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What insects will eat greenfly?
"Tumbleweed" wrote in
: Its often used an excuse that you must have been spraying or someone nearby must be spraying, if you have got lots of pests. It aint so. The simple fact is that generally pests like greenfly can vastly outbreed their predators (e xcept in artificial circmstances such as the parasitic wasps in greenhouses) and that their numbers are controlled either through seasonal factors (for example winter) or shortage of food. Pretending that nature will strike a balance which includes mopping up all the greenfly and caterpillars on your plants is just that, a pretence. I'm not pretending. Nor did I say that 'nature would strike a balance'. I still think, (having tried it), that gardening 'organically' in a small garden surrounded by other non-'organic' gardeners is a bit pointless. Your stuff will be affected by other people's approach: you can't pretend you are on a desert island when the council is squirting weedkiller through your fence. If everyone else in the area has the same problem, it may (or may not) not be caused by the use of pesticides, and it might well not go away if they weren't used. I don't know of any detailed tests. Do you? So far, we seem to be working with anecdotal evidence on both sides of the discussion. I genuinely don't have greenfly problems here. If they aren't being controlled by predators, what other factors would you suggest? It could be the soil or climate, but I'm not clear how those interact with greenfly populations. The difference in bird and insect life is one of the more obvious things. I still sometimes get aphid problems on houseplants: putting them outside usually clears them. Victoria -- gardening on a north-facing hill in South-East Cornwall -- |
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