A couple of days ago I notices that my lovely broccoli plants that I have grown from seed over the last 8 weeks , have lots of tiny holes in the leaves and on closer inspection , so did my cabbage , cauliflower and brussels .... When I put my hand near the plants , these little black things jumped off like fleas ........
I asked a few of the chaps around if they new what they were and they were scratching there heads just as much as I was .....
So I go home and straight on the internet to investigate these little critters !!
So I find out they are Flea Beetles ..... I went on to read that they are a bit partial to about anything in the brassica family , as well as potatoes , and toms , radishs , and egg plants ....
I was horror struck
I spent the next 8 hours , reading everything and anything about these unwelcome visiter in the hope that I could find a way of controling them ....
I'm not one for using chemicals , it was one of my biggest reasons for getting an alloment , so I didn't have to consume nasty chemicals !!!
So I come up with a big list of things I could do
The first thing was Bright yellow sticky papper .... I looked on the the web and I these strips were like a £5 on pop for a pack of 5
( I'm sorry but why do I want to spend money on these , I might as well go to the shop and buy my veg ) So I improvise nowink
I run round house looking for yellow bits of card and I come up with the cover from my yellow pages , lol ( new that would come in handy one day ) I raided my daughters bedroom and unknown to her yet wacko I pinch all the covers off her old school text book which were bright yellow !!! I managed to laminate about 12 pieces in all !! I'm thinking if I laminate them , then I can wash them once they become to bug infested and reuse them nowink Then I raided my kitchen cupboards to see if I could find anything sticky !!! I found a pot of black treacle in the back of the cupboard that had been there for some time , ( No one liked it , it had been there a few years from a recipe I tried ) Result smile I covered these laminated cards and took them down to the alloment !!! I hung a few of the on the net frame I had build so they were just floating in the air and place a few of the between the rows ..... I also Held one card over each plant and shock the plant a little and they all jumped up and stuck to the card .... this was very satisfing as the card was full of them by the time id done the last plant
!!!! This was not the only thing I did !!
Story to be coninued ......