Slaters

  If you check the soil in our beds you will see them scuttling around: grey, 7 body segments and 14 legs, up to 2 cm long and 0.5 cm wide, curling up into a ball when disturbed: in Australia they are called slaters, they are also known as woodlice, roly-polies, pill bugs and by [more]

Green plant hopper

About 15 mm small and shaped like a bright green triangle green plant hoppers are very well disguised as a leaf. Most often you will only realise they are around when they hop long distances to escape after being disturbed. A member of the bug family they are a pest sucking on the plant’s sap. [more]

Dealing with citrus stink bugs

When inspecting plants look out for tell-tale signs: the actual animals, often sucking at the most tender leaves. Black adult or orange immature bugs limp and wilting leaves leaves that show brown, burnt areas intense, repugnant citrus smell Preventive measures: Not many predators go for stink bugs because of their caustic defence tactics. Make sure [more]

Dealing with aphids

When inspecting plants look out for tell-tale signs: the actual animals, often sucking at the most tender leaves plenty of ants patrolling the plants limp and wilting leaves sugary, sticky honeydew on the leaves Preventive measures: Aphids are hard to prevent, but there are a lot of predators eating aphids. Companion plant flowers with the [more]

Aphids

Aphids are soft skinned sap-sucking insects. They are tiny animals about 2 to 8 mm long. Aphids come in a range of colours: green, black and brown, whitish and light red. Other names are black-fly and green-fly. Most aphids species specialise on particular host plants. They are a serious and if not contained devastating pest. [more]