“Friends” and “foes” in my organic garden

This yellow dragonfly is found in my back lane. There used to be another red coloured dragon-fly.

Beautiful red ladybird on my kendongdong leaves.  Have not seen many ladybirds these days.

My camera is not able to take small insects or rather I am not that camera savvy. You can see a blur green spider which is hanging on its thread.Used a leaf to show the spider dangling down.

Red wrigglers from HS Wong’s DQ Farm.  Found out that I also have such worms in my garden.  Latest experiment is my wormiculture, started since June 2009. Have already harvested  my first worm castings in Oct.  As per Mr Wong’s suggestion, I made tea from the worm castings and sprayed all  over my garden.

Have yet to spot my old ‘friend’ – the chameleon, also the solo big bumble bee. There used to be many small bees hovering around my starfruit tree.  Maybe due to the rainy season, these creatures have gone into  “hibernation?”

OR most probably most of them have been snuffed out by the constant MPBJ’s fogging against the dengue fever.

Yuks! those creepy worms or larvae from butterflies.  No informed gardener would be happy to see these.  Neither would I be happy to see butterflies in my garden even though they are so colourful  and it’s so nice to see them flying around.  With butterflies around, you would sure to find their larvae on my lime leaves, the above caterpillar is very happy on my succulent jambu air leaves.   Notice the white jambu flowers on the bottom right. looking forward to eating my red jambu air fruits soon.

This grasshopper is easily 4 inches long. You can do your own comparison as this is the normal rectangular box you use when you ‘tar-pau’ your food.  These huge grasshoppers know where to get good organic leaves . They love my mango, longan and  banana leaves.

My ‘holey’ longan leaves – after the grasshopper had a feast.  Just one huge grasshopper is enough to wipe out all my mango shoots.

Thank-goodness I am not an organic farmer having to face so many predators and weather issues but just an ordinary avid gardener.  Can you imagine the heartache and stress they have to endure with acres of farmland  under such stressful tropical l environment.  I only have a corner lot and it’s pretty tough to handle already. Therefore we organic kakis emphatise with the truly organic farmers. Their life is not easy -having to till the soil and face so many problems…. so take heart when you buy their produce which is more expensive. They need to survive too…… just like the grasshoppers and caterpillars….not forgetting the  earthworms and the bees.