bugs on the flowers

I don't know where I should start this blog post: With the flowers - the larger, metaphorical picture, or with me - the smaller personal one?

Okay let's begin with the flowers.

If you've been following along here for a while, you'll know that sometime last year, after about 16 years of organic farming, something inside of me felt very strongly that we had to start growing flowers. I think it was the romantic picture in my head of row after row of beautiful blossoms that initially drew me to them, but it also had a lot to do with the colours, the shapes and the need to grow something completely new and different.

So we prepared a patch and planted a green manure crop to nurture the soil, then we spaded it in, planted seeds, set up the irrigation, weeded them, visited them several times a day and gave them our energy, fertilised the soil and their leaves, staked them to help them stand upright in the weather and then we started to marvel as bud after bud began opening and our garden of green stems and leaves became filled with flowers.

Of course we were overjoyed and in love! We picked them and made posies, we gave big bunches away, we took loads of photographs of them and we even sold some.

But then, as is so often the case in farming, as soon as you think you've got something, Mother Nature comes along with her own ideas.

One day we woke up to find a cloud of tiny bugs in the flowers. We tried to shake them off, but they flew right back and landed. A few days later we noticed that some of the leaves of the plants looked eaten and in fact some of the flower petals did too.

Not the flowers!!

After 17 years of farming apples and vegetables, we've come in contact with most of the problems that can crop up and mostly know the reasons why they do, but flowers are a new and completely different story. We were starting from scratch.

So we took pictures of the bugs, we looked at them under magnifying glasses, we googled to identify them, and then we tried to find out all we could about why they'd come and how we could get rid of them.

Around the same time I discovered a bunch of people on an online flower grower forum were dealing with the same issue.

To start with we changed the irrigation from overhead to drip to get rid of the tropical atmosphere we had created. Then we waited and watched, and I worried. The online people were buying 'organic insecticide' to kill the bugs and were starting to see results, but still we waited and watched, and I worried.

After a while the joy that had filled me up whenever I'd spent time in the garden turned to dread as I encountered misshapen buds and asymmetrical flowers and more signs of the bugs making the flowers their homes.

After a week or so of expressing my anguish at our inaction, a courier turned up one day to deliver a bottle of the 'organic insecticide'. For a second my heart lifted at the thought of the imminent solution and then I looked over at my farmer boy's face and saw that it wasn't that simple: what I thought was going to be the solution was filling him up with dread. The insecticide went into the shed and we went back to watching and waiting.

The next day I noticed that the weather had changed, the humidity had gone and the insects had reduced in number. Some time after that some of the most magnificent dahlias I had ever seen opened up their great big, perfect faces. And then a whole bunch more. And I was delighted.

But then you guessed it: the weather changed, the bugs returned, I went back to the online flower farmers and saw that they were still spraying and I started hassling my farmer boy with 'when can we spray?' all over again.

Time after time I brought it up and it didn't happen. I threw at him that when there were issues with the apples we did everything we could to try to fix them - we sprayed potassium bicarbonate in humid weather against black spot, we fertilised them to make them healthy and strong, we netted them against the birds and hail, and we tried to keep the kangaroos out. But he drew the line at insecticide and the bottle of oil sat in the shed.

Looking back I'm not sure why I didn't mix it and spray it myself. I guess I must have known deep down that that's not how we do things here. It's reactive and panicky. I've also heard enough stories of farmers getting the maths wrong and killing whole crops by mixing the wrong quantities.

A few weeks into this bug story I finally understood what was going on. We were sitting in the car one day and he told me that in our recent organic inspection the inspector had asked him what our weed management plan is. 'I don't believe in weeds', he replied. 'I think that answer should automatically guarantee your organic certification', she replied. And then I understood.

Panicking and using insecticide to kill the bugs, even if it is organic, upsets the natural balance. The insects are there for a reason and we can't possibly understand what impact eradicating them will have on our environment. It feels arrogant to think that we know what effect killing some bugs will do to the bigger garden picture. Ladybugs, frogs and hover-flies predate on aphids and thrip; what happens to their populations without them? Once we start on these interventionist paths it can change our mindset and the whole way we garden. Once we believe we can control things, the quick fix becomes expensive and we get addicted to it.

Let alone the fact that the spray we bought is certified organic for use on flowers but not on food.

So like the cabbage moth caterpillars on the cabbages, the slugs on the lettuces and the slater-bugs in the strawberries, I've come back around to plucking off those I can, researching gentle, kind, natural methods of control and trying to be patient and accept. To trust Mother Nature and hope that this crazy wind blows them away.

Which in a very long winded way brings me back to me. Despite continuing with the meditation and starting on Valerian tablets I'm still not sleeping well. The past few days have also found me feeling overly sensitive and weepy. But instead of heading down the path of prescription sleeping tablets which I have been tempted by so many times, I've decided to trust my farmer boy's theory and be patient, look for the kind and natural solutions, remember that the four other women in my family also suffer from sleep issues, and hope that this crazy wind that's going to blow away all the thrip, takes my grumpiness and sleep issues with it.

Oh my goodness, I did not intend to write an essay. Are you still with me? Does the metaphor work? 

I think I need to end this by stating very clearly that I'm DEFINITELY not judging farmers who deal with their weed issues as problems or their bug issues by spraying; or people who respond to their sleep issues with medication. We are all about balance here and believe that it's okay for everyone to draw their own line in the dirt.

Just quickly to end this off because it's fun -
I'm reading The Language of Flowers, my dear and thoughtful friend Delia sent me and so far it's beautiful.
I'm still knitting the back of my Mirehouse sweater.
We've just finished watching and loving Better Things (thanks for the recommendation Abby x).
I'm listening to This Is Criminal podcast.
And I'm hoping that our girls come home from school happy and calm for the weekend.

What about you?
How are you feeling? What are you hoping for? Dreaming of? Sleeping remedies?

Sending love and a bunch of imperfectly perfect dahlias.

See you next week.

Love, Kate xx