by Marla Koss, Alameda Backyard Growers Board member
After gardening in the same backyard for years, I thought I’d seen everything I was ever going to see. I’ve had peanut plants come up in my garden thanks to a squirrel; I’ve been visited by the most beautiful bee – a large, fluffy, all-golden male carpenter bee (his wife would be the lovely all-black bee we more commonly see); and even saw a chickadee swoop down and pick aphids off my rose buds several mornings in a row until the bushes were picked clean. And since the last drought a handful of years back, I have NOT seen a single snail. Slugs, yes – snails, no. Even droughts can come with a silver-lined cloud.
This spring, there was definitely something new. With the soil already dried out by the end of March, small patches of fine, golden sand began appearing around the yard in otherwise well-mulched garden soil. It didn’t take but a moment to figure out ants were the culprits. Underneath they were most likely building new subdivisions to be closer to irrigated soil. Crafty little guys, those ants.
About the same time I spotted a few ants scouting around in my fruit trees. And before I could say “I must buy some Tanglefoot” they were all over a half-dozen branch tips of my apricot tree tending flocks of aphids. The aphids sucked sap and had saturated the leaves they were on (plus lots of others in the vicinity) with honeydew. And a few ants were lying around in the sticky mess like intoxicated party-goers. A strong jet of water and some selective pruning got rid of them and the honeydew, but judging from the number of little sand patches popping up around the yard, I figured it was just one of many ants and aphids vs. human battles to come.
Another morning, walking by my plum tree, I saw plum leaf curl starting at the branch tips. Leaf curl on plum trees is not the same as peach leaf curl – that is caused by a fungus. Plum leaf curl is caused by the leaf curl plum aphid Brachycaudus helichrysi. (You can read more about them here: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/r611301811.html.) Instead of sitting out in broad daylight like the aphids on my apricot tree, leaf curl plum aphids get busy sucking liquid from a plum leaf, the leaf curls up and the whole group has a dandy hiding place.
In the past I have taken my revenge by pruning off the new plum tree growth that’s curled up. But in a moment of curiosity I uncurled a few leaves to see if the aphids were still there, and as luck would have it found a ladybug pupa instead. Unrolling more leaves, I found another pupa, and then a ladybug in the larval stage. Having by now spotted a few adult ladybugs busy on the leaves of several of trees, I left the curled leaves on my plum alone. Better to let Nature take charge.
Eventually more lady bugs arrived on my fruit trees; you’d expect to see them there. But I didn’t expect to find them also crawling around in the dirt where I had just pulled weeds and excess marjoram volunteers under the plum tree. I had been absentmindedly yanking for a while before realizing that the adult ladybugs suddenly crawling around in the bare dirt had fallen off the plants I was pulling out. I was pulling out valuable ladybug hatchery plants. When I checked what I’d thrown in the pile, sure enough there were larvae and pupae attached to some of the leaves.
Since the new ant colonies have popped up, I actually haven’t seen much of an increase in ant activity. The aphids are now under control and I know better than to toss plant matter before checking for beneficial insect eggs/pupae/larvae. The intricate dance that the ladybugs, aphids and ants have done in my garden this spring reinforces my resolve to work towards an ecological balance in my own yard. With enough like-minded neighbors, we can make larger and larger areas where backyard flora and fauna can find that all-important equilibrium for a healthy ecosystem.
Finally, in one of the most significant gardening articles Alameda Backyard Growers has ever contributed to the Alameda Sun newspaper, Alameda County Master Gardener and ABG Board member Birgitt Evans has summed up the importance of trying to achieve a balanced ecosystem in one’s yard; it is well worth reading and bookmarking here.