Everything in the garden has been looking good. The new planter has been delivered and some English lavender planted. (Tasteful repro-Adams or cement kitsch?) In the back garden the agapanthus has put on a good show and I was metaphorically hunkered down on my horticultural haunches. Then disaster struck; cydalima perspectalis.
More dreaded than an investigation by the taxman or a Ryanair flight, worse even than being an enemy of Harvey Weinstein in Hollywood or anywhere else. For eight years the box hedge flourished and then in less than two weeks I had an infestation of these pesky caterpillars from Asia. Earlier this year I was shown how to find them. You need sharp eyes as they are both tiny and well camouflaged. In Margravine Cemetery a team of volunteers have kept them at bay by searching and destroying. This is the eco way to solve the problem. It’s not my way. I cut the hedge back to expose the infected areas and sprayed with a litre of Provado Ultimate Bug Killer. It is the napalm of garden insecticides but, like napalm, does not discriminate. However, it is better for the garden eco-system to have this horrendous hiatus and then return to normal than to have a dead hedge that will not provide any habitat. Incidentally this is not the same as box blight, another horror that’s caused by a fungus.
Like any good general I am not relying on today’s work. I will spray again in a week or so and continue until I get results. I am also attacking on a second front. I have installed a BUXatrap box tree moth trap. This is a funnel trap with a pheromone lure to attract the moths which then drop down through the funnel into a transparent drum where I can gloat over their corpses. This is the theory but will it work?
And what does the moth look like? I recognised it at once; it is the moth I photographed in the kitchen recently (25th June 2017) without realising that it was a wolf waiting to descend on the fold.
