Black flies and earwigs and spiders, oh my!

What is it with us bipeds? One glimpse of a little creature that squirms, wriggles, or crawls about on numerous legs, and we lose our minds as we reach for swatters and brooms and spray bottles. We could really do a better job of choosing our battles.

When we relocated to our current property we inherited a beautiful array of gardens from the previous owners. Much thought and planning must have gone into the works. In the tradition of the cottage garden, the closely packed blooming selections provide floral delights all months of the year. But Richard and I made the decision to go green on the property, and my understanding is it takes a good three years for a piece of land to recover from years of commercial fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. By moving to an organic model, we’ve basically cut supplies from the pushers and the yard denizens are going cold turkey.

If only I could hire a team of gardeners and ground keepers, but alas I cannot. I prefer a more spacious style of gardening so we chose to cull a few plantings and lighten the workload. We also lost a few specimens the first year, no doubt due to withdrawal from chemicals, and the natural selection proved to make intelligent decisions. In our third year, we are experiencing some backlash. We have had issues with fungus, ants undermined a good bit of our efforts, and powdery mildew took my squashes in their prime.

Going natural

That brings me to the whole point of the story. No, I’m not gardening in the buff. I’m letting my garden plantings get along without all the chemical concoctions they have grown accustomed to. How will they do? Well, I ask, have you ever noticed that the woods don’t show any signs of suffering from a lack of fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers? Kinda makes you go hmmmmm….

My last installment of the Secret Garden series detailed how paper wasps saved the day just before an army of caterpillars laid waste to my pole beans. I remembered this when I noticed some visitors to my composting bin. Weird and wormy caterpillar-looking creatures were all about the thing. Like most of us, my first reaction was to knock them off. But I paused. I took a photo and uploaded it to my mobile bug app. Turns out the visitor is the black soldier fly larva. Yup, it’s a maggot. My research tells me this creature is not a crop threat, nor a pest predator. My new best friends are hard-working, compost-assisting wonders. These guys were present and ready for duty, and I almost hosed them off.

In Dave Goulson’s informative book, The Garden Jungle, I also learned about the humble earwig. I see these guys all the time. What a misunderstood creature. Funny thing, I searched the internet in hopes of finding a photo for this post. The one at left was ultimately purchased from iStock.com. My query presented links and links to product pages of poisons to rid yourself of this “dreaded” creature. These product pages failed to mention that earwigs, although sometimes partial to your garden produce, are much more interested in aphids, scale insects, codling moths, and other garden pests. And because they are higher up the food chain, they reproduce more slowly. What that means is the garden pests make a quick come-back. Meanwhile, the earwig, tender mother that she is, reproduces more slowly. She cleans and cares for each egg then watches over the toddlers until they are ready to live on their own. If the choice is made to annihilate them, you will soon need a pesticide for aphids, scale insects, and codling moths, too. This is a great business model for somebody, but the model isn’t interested in your garden or my garden, and it’s definitely not in the best interest of the planet.

Lastly, I’d like to address spiders. What an undeserving bad rap they get. Yes, there is the occasional specimen that has the potential to harm, but this is not true of the vast majority. Take the gorgeous orb spider, eater of flies, beetles, moths, mosquitoes, and wasps. These arachnids are magnificent engineers and, in my humble opinion, a beauty to behold. They build their webs by first bravely leaping from one surface to the next. Shuffling to the middle of the first strand, they drop to a surface below. The web is built off this shaking “Y” platform. A fresh web is built every day. They are fastidious and don’t like a messy home. They gobble up the old web, rest an hour, then build another. I don’t see enough of them in my garden and that worries me.

We need them

I expect it will take a minute to get this land back in balance. But we’re ready to give it a try and persist regardless of what consequences may come as we get there.

As Earth continues to lose forest and natural habitat to industries, cities, and neighborhoods, our hardest working citizens are in trouble. Here at the Camden Longhouse we have committed to letting a couple of spots in the yard go natural. As in, no mowing and no weeding. Our tiny inhabitants need these sanctuaries and we need the tiny inhabitants.

I will continue to watch how this land performs as I allow it to evolve into its own, natural balance, with just a little nudge here and there from me and a lot of help from all you black soldier flies and earwigs and spiders. We’re glad you’re here!