Whilst walking up the school path earlier 17 wood pigeons flew off from the classroom plots. On inspection it appeared that they had stripped the pea plants back to the stalks and taken a liking for the small beetroot plants by nipping off the leaves from the stem. Those naughty pigeons!
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| Wood Pigeon looking for more peas |
The willow classroom was covered with lots of immature ladybirds. They were munching on the large amounts of both greenfly and blackfly which have taken up refuge there. The picture below shows one creeping up on an unsuspecting greenfly. Hopefully these young ladybirds will find their way to the broad beans in the World War 2 garden where there are plenty of blackfly to feed on!
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| Immature ladybird creeping up on a greenfly (click to enlarge) |
4 comments:
That larva looks much more spiky than the ones I have - just wonder if it could be a different type of ladybird?
Hi again - just Googled and it could be that you have the Harlequin ladybird larvae which is bad news for our ladybirds.
Hi! Unfortunately yes, we do have Harlequin Ladybirds at the school garden already. I think it is fair to say that they are everywhere now and often occur in huge numbers. The School Garden Club are shortly going to do an adult ladybird survey in the garden and see what the ratio is up there of our native ladybird to the Harlequin Ladybird. The willow classroom has been absolutely covered in ladybird larvae these last few days-probably of both types. They haven't found their way to the broad beans yet though where they would have a field day!
I have a web site devoted to school gardening and have a section showing examples of how schools have set up and work on gardening projects. If you or your pupils fancy providing a contribution for this examples page you would be most welcome.
We are fortunate in that so far we haven't come across any harlequins. I guess it's just a matter of time.
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