So the garden project this spring involved me digging up some 7.5 foot by 13 foot patch of my backyard lawn and filling it with garden soil to make it suitable for a perennial flower garden. It was HARD work and took about a week because I did a little bit each day. I finally finished it up, filled it with soil... put some edging around it, happily went to the local florist/greenhouse shop and bought some perennials.
They had a really good deal, I think... Perennials for $0.45 each! I bought some rudbeckia, foxgloves, purple coneflowers, English lavender (munstead), blanket flowers (golden goblin), and liatris. I have several more types of flowers coming in the mail and I also have several more to transplant from my portable indoor greenhouse.
I planted the flowers I bought at the nursery last Friday. Then on Saturday morning I noticed there were some chomps on the leaves and stems. I had no idea what it was! There was no way it could have been a rabbit, no way it was a mole or a mouse (which we have plenty of in our yard)... It was a total mystery to me. And I am a very beginner gardener. I have lots to learn about the art of gardening and everything that comes with it, including pests and disease.
Then Sunday morning came and there were even more chomps! The flowers I so adored were being destroyed! And I had no idea what the culprit was. It was also strange that some of the flowers were "cut" right in half at the base of the stem. I did some research and found a list of possible culprits... But I didn't actually "see" any in the garden, which was the weird thing so I had no way of knowing what to look for.
So Sunday night, at around midnight I went out to my garden with a flashlight to try to find out what it was...... and found it! A crane fly larvae. I showed it to my husband, read a little bit about them and went back outside. I dug around the base of each and every plant and found several at each and every plant. It was incredibly disheartening. I destroyed them of course... and I realize it's bad karma but it was all for the love of my flowers. I couldn't just go to sleep and leave the flowers in the garden to die so I pulled each and every one of them back out (except for the lavender, which didn't looks like it was affected). And transplanted them back into pots. And this was all done at midnight with a flashlight. I was tired, frustrated, angry. But it just goes to show that nothing is ever easy. There are always complications. And I learn something new every day!
So now I have plan of attack. I'm not going to use chemical means to eradicate them. I'll just try to win at their game. I read that surrounding the young plant with a toilet/paper towel roll when planting will prevent the cutworms from coming to the base of the plant and chomping it in half. And I know I don't have cutworms in the garden, just crane fly larvae.. I'll try the tricks anyway. Another thing I will do is surround the base of the plant with a couple of toothpicks so that if the worms get through my first barrier they won't be able to go all the way around the plant to chomp it in half. And the third measure is that I will sprinkle coffee grounds around each plant. I'm not sure if coffee grounds will affect the larvae but it's worth a try.
I'll let you all know how it goes and if it works. I just hope the plants grow big and strong because once they do, the stems won't be subject to their malicious attacks.
These are the crane fly larvae from my garden and this is what they generally look like.
This is the damage they caused. There are big chomps on the leaves, and you can see there's another purple coneflower plant behind the bigger one that was nearly completely destroyed. It looks like it's started to grow back already.
These are the blanket flowers. They have several stems coming out of each plant and several of the stems were "cut"... Fortunately it looks like some new ones are growing back.
Each and every one of my plants had some chomp on it in one place or another but they were all saved. I replanted a few with some barriers to keep the worms away. I'll see in a couple of days if they work or not. If so, I'll start replanting the rest. I read that crane fly larvae stop feeding in May... so I'm hoping that I picked off a lot of them and that they stop eating soon so my plants have a chance for growth.
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