Top six pests

What's your most hated allotment pest? Add your vote to the comments below: it'll only take a sec and I'd be fascinated to know.

Choose from:

1. The slug
2. The cabbage white caterpillar
3. The gooseberry sawfly
4. The aphid
5. The flea beetle
6. Something else?

The slug wins hands down for me. They cause the most damage to the crops I probably care the most about: lettuces and potatoes. And they still give me the heebie-jeebies despite years of dispatching them in all manner of ways, from late night slug patrols to nematodes.

Comments

[Tom Gleeson]

The Slug !!!!!

[Heavy Petal]

The slug - er - "wins" hands down. Nothing else is quite as destructive.

[Clare]

1. slugs
2. slugs
3 slugs
4. snails
5.slugs
6.slugs

Consistent, if nothing else.

[Clare]

And did I mention slugs?

[Jess]

Whitefly, whitefly, whitefly!!

My allotment's not far from yours (Walton on Thames), and I get shocking whitefly on my brassicas. Absolutely ghastly. I can JUST about keep on top of it by spraying with horticultural soap once a week, but it's a losing battle.

Don't you get it too?

[Jane Perrone]

Whitefly don't really bother me. Yes, they do feature on my brassicas, but they don't do a hell of a lot of damage. Do you find they weaken/damage the plants significantly?

[Scarecrow]

Right now my biggest problems are earwigs that munch during the night and small grasshoppers during the day!!

[Jess]

It's not that they damage the plants much, it's the revolting black mould that grows on the sweet sticky stuff they produce. Makes cleaning the veg before eating very difficult. It's the only thing that ever tempts me to use 'nasty' chemicals!

[Hap]

This time of year it is snails. Huge Brown snails, but the turtles love them so at least the damage they do converts to Escagots snacks for the turtles.

The rest of the year it is Mealybugs and scale. They are "farmed" by the ants, so you never can get rid of them.

[maxamillion]

6. People who seem to view the tiny whitefly, the deer, and everything in between as a pest. What in the world damage do grasshoppers do? If you eliminate all the things you don't like, there will be nothing left and you will get the kind of planet you deserve.If you get whitefly on your brassicas then grow something else.
All of these creatures are doing what they need to do, eating and living.
Grow enough variety that you are not dependent on one item that might get wiped out by a pest.
Share your garden with the wildlife or there won't be any gardens.
Cool down, relax and enjoy the variety that this planet has developed,get interested in things instead of killing them.
I'm a gardener of 20 yrs. and garden maintenance consultant, and fed up of peoples' obsession with slugs and snails. You need frogs, hedgehogs and foxes and thrushes to eat them, and keep changing your planting until you have the things that they don't eat. The more you kill them, the more you create a vacuum for that species, so another will come to fill the space, you can leave them alone to achieve their own balance.
You can't have everything.

[Sue]

Hi Jane,
Came across your site while searching for organic remedies for red spider mite - without doubt my number one pest.
I've recently started my own gardening blog - you can find me at www.balcony-garden.blogspot.com
If you'd like to swap links, let me know.