Nothing was sadder than our lush, full and glorious lilac bush becoming decimated by the application of the chemical Round-upโข that the neighbors sprayed when they moved in some years ago. The run off went directly into our garden before we had raised beds. Everything died.
Except the blackberries. My gosh, those seemed to drink up the toxin like it was sweet tea. But I digress.
When we began to put our garden together, for the second time, in raised beds, we noticed that the lilac was finally sprouting from the bottom!
We tended it happily, gave it support and last year, in the autumn, I noticed odd brown circles on the leaves. It was infested with something, so I sprayed Neem Oil on it, and it bounced back. But look what I found today!
This hideous, almost microscopic turd machine will decimate and destroy your lilac faster than I can type. When I came into my office to consult the oracle (Wikipedia for Gardeners) I discovered that this awful menace will burrow into the leaf and create tunnels INSIDE the plant, sucking away at everything glorious about your lilacs.
So I began snipping at every leaf... then I found one that was "folded" at the tip. I wish I'd braced myself for the next picture. Ugh. And ... ewwwwww...
I keep hoping that I'll find something in my garden that is useful. There are plenty of useful bugs out there other wise we'd all be swimming in larvae turds and nothing would be green โ that's a link to all the leafminer monsters out there. That will take you to the lilac leafminer, but the right sidebar has an amazing array of the "leafminer" turd machinery world. These little monsters are tiny, but so gross at 0.125 to 0.25 inch long. They eventually become flying monsters, but they are hard to find and somehow, by the time they become tiny egg laying insects, the damage is done.
Here's a final picture for you to gaze at not lovingly, but with the seething anger of a gardener like me, who has struggled with maintaining her lilacs. Did you know that lilacs are edible for human consumption? You can mix the flowers with a lemonade to create a sensational spring time tonic!
Just, you know, without the larvae. Here's to hoping we can find something beneficial for our next post. Heavy Sigh.
Any images and graphics (unless noted) are mine.
