Cumquats, bugs and blogging.

Let's face it, I'm pretty hopeless at blogging.

And by that I mean, I just don't do it.

So from now on I'm going to try to blog more. They'll be short, sharp and not perfect blogs. It's going to be a more of a 'I've-just- come-in-from-the-garden-take-me-how-I-am' kind of blog.

And this is why I am going to tell you about bugs. Stink bugs, or bronze orange bug -Musgraveia sulciventris to be exact.

This afternoon I was wandering around the garden when I spied several orange cumquats ready for picking on my little tree. Very exciting. I do love a good cumquat marmalade. Tangy, zesty..... but I digress.

A few cumquats ready for picking

As I went to pick the cumquat, something moved. I knew what it was before I saw it, or rather them, properly. The chemically, awful smell is unmistakable. Bronze orange (stink) bugs!!

Bloody disgusting, evil, creepy critters. Green when they are young so you can barely notice them against the foliage. But they are still all the while sucking the sap out of the tree's foliage and damaging the young shoots and fruit.  Then they turn orangey and get stinkier.  The adult looks a bit more like a spiny cockroach. Apparently the chemical they emit can burn your eyes if they manage to squirt it in there. In this instance, nature is truly, wondrously, revolting. (I do say that in awe.)

Stink bug nymph in action. You can even see the dead shoots .

Last season they had inundated my lemon tree so I read up on them. Had me pretty much terrified by the time I had to deal with them. I donned gloves and goggles and had to hold my breath as I picked the suckers (literally) off the tree and put them in a container of hot water. Worked like a charm apart from the fact I had to actually touch the little bastards.

I'm sure I read month or so ago on a horticulturalist's Facebook page, about just using pyrethrum spray (organic spray) to kill them. But you actually have to hit each bug with the spray. It's sounding more trouble than it's worth, and by that time I could have them pulled off by hand and drowning in my plastic container of death :-) And here's a little picture to illustrate my point.

The water container of death. (Excuse the old paint on the bottom.)

Sadly, we don't have smell-a-net or smell-a-blogs or I could also share with you the foul stench they have left on my garden gloves. Probably lucky, really. It is indeed, disgusting.

On the plus side, these evil sap suckers got me inspecting all my citrus trees closely, and I noticed that my baby lemonade tree
was flowering and growing much better than before. My Tahitian lime has heaps of fruit coming, and apparently it loved its recent pruning and fertilising with Organic Xtra fertiliser pellets. If you want to know more about this  click here, but suffice to say I love the stuff, as do my plants. It is easy and convenient to apply, it's organic and made in Queensland.What's not to love? It's a match made in heaven really. And not at all like me and stink bugs.

My little lemonade tree with flowers and new growth.

Tahitian lime with baby fruit after a good prune and fertilising.

And the cumquats? Well, these days I am being very clever. I used to pick six or so and keep them in the fridge, where they would eventually go rotten before I had enough to make marmalade. So now I am cutting them up ready and freezing them until I have enough. Today I added four to my cumquat stash. Genius gardening I reckon.

Ready for the freezer

The freezer stash of cumquats.