Out in the garden last summer the air was green with these little bugs. They are around a centimetre long at their largest and seemed to be congregating from choice over the orange tree.
Clearly odd little sap sucking leaf hoppers of some sort but my dilemma is what to do with them? If I leave them they might ruin the trees, slowly weakening and killing it. They might ruin the fruit as well but since we only use a handful of the dozens of lemons the tree produces that isn’t an issue.
If I kill them off by spraying I might well kill off loads of the other little micro-wildlife we have creeping around the garden. I *do* spray cockroach killer around the doorways which must knock over things I’d rather keep but we have to balance some losses against the gain of keeping the yuckiest of beasties out of the house.
Still, we don’t spray in the garden or use pesticides other than scattering the occasional hundredweight of snail killer around – not that it makes much difference. We seem to be “Snail Central for the southern hemisphere. Despite decaying corpses and shells crunching under foot for weeks after a mass slaughter… next time it rains… out they come again in their thousands!!! C’est la guerre – at least they feeds the lizards.
Anyway, back to the subject. Has anyone got some suggestions?? Leave them?? Kill them?? Are they really a problem… or just food in the chain??
The Eclectic Interweb 