Ruud Kleinpast: Eyes on your pests

A few things to look for in October: 

Passionvine Hoppers do a bit of damage from late October/Early November till March-April 

These are the problematic insects that are common in the north (and for the past few years, also around Christchurch – they’re spreading South! 

Adult passionvine hoppers plus one nearly-mature fluffybum

Most of the damage is cased when the bugs are growing bigger and older (later in spring); by then these insects can jump away from insecticides applied; they clever enough to avoid being immersed. 

CONTROL and PREVENTION: 

Keep an eye on the new fluffy bums hatching in your garden right now!!! Those tiny nymphs often congregate in large flocks at the ends of new growth; they are still very feeble in their movement and won’t be able to escape a cloud of fly-spray aimed at them on a wind-still morning 

Spray these young Passionvine Hoppers in October with a good dose of fly-spray; your only chance to hit them before they become troublesome.

Slugs and Snails are a real pest in the garden at this time of the year; moisture and new plant growth encourages them 

Control measures that work:  

• Weed control will expose them to predators (thrushes) 
• Using Bait pellets in a pottle, dug into soil: take-away container with lid on and bait inside; holes cut in the side of the container let slugs and snails in; but not dogs and cats
• Alternative version is to use some off-cuts (15-30 cm long) of plastic waste-pipe, diameter 50 to 75 mm, which allows access to slugs and snails, but not to birds.  Put some bait in the pipes and anchor them down with a heavy brick 

• Encourage Carabid beetles (Ground beetles): they often feed on slugs and snail juveniles and eggs

Slug and Snail bait station

And then there are Mites, especially Two-Spotted SPIDER MITES 

Tiny, eight-legged ACARI that love to suck the fluids out of the leaves of your plants in spring, summer and autumn. 

Tetranychus urticae is a cosmopolitan species of mite that causes heaps of damage. Control is not very difficult: there are some good miticides (note: .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
That'd be climb passes our men in the garden at
the time every Saturday morning, high rude.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hello Jack? Are you aware it's going to be chaos
gardening next week?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
What does that mean? That mean every week of house
gardening at our place road? You've seen our place.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
I knew you, I knew you. They have something to
say about that.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
No, y Yates do this every year.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
They've got gardening week and this this this year it's
chaos gardening. The wild trend taking route. You know what
that means if you don't throw your lawn and you
just you know. But that's that is exactly where it
came from.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
You know, they tried to do it down the road
from us. They had a park down the road where
they tried to do it, and they're trying to rewild
all of the thing. And then there was a bit
of an incident because there was a there was a
miscommunication with the council and so a well meaning contractor
came along. Having let this grass grow for like I
don't know a year or something. It was really long.
But this well meaning contractor came along, fired up as

(01:18):
his moa and swiftly.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
Took to the previously wilding area and mowed it down
to size. Yeah, it was a bit of a bit
of a local The local Facebook pages were going wild
over it.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
So there you go.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
Well, I'm going to tell I'm going to tell you
to look out for these guys, but these thinks anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
There So passion vine hopits. These have been the bane
of my life. They've been a major problem in the
life place, and I think they are one of the
central reasons that I haven't yet managed to make passion
fruit work at my place. Could also do where I've
been growing. I've been going into a place that gives
it a fair amount of sun. Not all day sun.
I know he's supposed to have all day sun, but

(01:59):
I gets a fair amount of sun and hot sun.
It gets middle of the day sun. And yet I've
now had three passion fruit plants that have died, and
I blame the vine hoppers. Yeah, you know, they can
be quite little at the beast of times.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
You know your passion You know that because we've talked
about this before, I've done I've tried this now for
the last fifteen years. Jack and I have the very
first plump actually surviving and going. So I'm not going
to I'm not going to say too much at this stage.
You'll hear later on, I suppose. But it's finally working
for me. Yeah, thank you, I mean honestly, you and me, baby,

(02:34):
you know we got to do this. Well.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
You've got more stickability here than I do. I just
I got so because I was literally going out there
every day with the eight year old, because you can
see the passion for it grow so quickly. Usually that
I would go out there every day and we would
plot its progress, and then you just got a bit decreasing,
being like, oh no, here come the vine hoppers. On
here it is, it's gone again. Where's my sister and Nelson?

(02:56):
I mean she they sort of accidentally grow passion fruit,
you know, like the passion for it grows, and the
cracks and the and the driveway and then it's groaning
with fruit. I just think this isn't fair.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Yep, that's it. Yeah, and the passion vine hopper. Now,
but you're absolutely right. We're talking about a couple of
things that are quite important now because the passion vine
opera is the big one, especially in the north, although
I just I found out that my neighbors up the
road have got them now here. This lenking thing is
going south as much as it likes at the moment.
It's another one anyway, very quickly for those who are listening.

(03:30):
It's all on the website anyway, where there's quite a
bit of info. But now's the time to look for
those little nymphs of those passion vine oppers which are
coming out of their eggs now. And if you've got
a little bit of good safe works material if you like,
or sprays, spray them on a wind still day now

(03:51):
in the morning and you will actually get them. This
is important. And the second one is slugs and snails
are coming up. Weed control will expose them to predators,
the thrushes. So that's one of the ways to go. Oh,
you have baked pellets in a pozzle, all described and
you see the photos again on the website. And that's
the second one. But here's another one. Co rabbit beetles,

(04:14):
big beetles that we have in New Zealand. They eat
slugs and small snails, so I always leave them going.
That's what they need to do. It's cool, Yeah, they
do their native once and they eat those things.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
And and then of course the other alternative is, of
course with the the snails, is that you do realize
you can eat those because this is the French esca
go that we have in New Zealand.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
You realize that species of snail is exactly the same,
is it?

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Yes, we imported that from Europe and they and the
French imported us from northern from.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
What was it we imported snails?

Speaker 3 (04:55):
No we didn't. That was by excellent You came here
with the hear that everybody that had pots with plants
and went to New Zealand in eighteen hundreds took those snails.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Written a bit bit of a missed it just to
deliberately introduced them.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Sure, yeah, there was no Ministry of Anger and fresh
heads in there, so there was no quarantine. And the
third thing I've gone on the list is for you
is mites. Mites. Two spotted spider mites are really becoming
a pain in the bump. From now on the very
fine silk webbing. You'll find him from now on, mineral

(05:31):
oil's fatty acid and nan oil. And it's again all
on your wonderful website thanks to.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Libby, Thank you, sir, really appreciate it would climb past
in the garden for us this morning.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to news talks it'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio