Box caterpillar moth 1 gardener 0
Well I didn’t see that on the plan today.
I’d just come in from doing a bit of pruning in the shade garden. All is lush and coping nicely with the drought.
No rain now for a month. And the temperatures are in the low 30s most days. Apart from the days when it’s so much cooler around 24C and that’s when you find yourself running errands a long way from the garden and cursing your bad luck.
There are two box balls hiding in among all the other shrubs in the shade garden.
I planted them first when this area was just a dust bowl.
And I mean a dust bowl. 2011.
And here is the lonely one in 2013.
The other one further down the garden.
Just waiting to be joined by its friends.
And today you can’t even see the plant in among the shrubs.
Which makes me wonder if the box caterpillar moth is a sight hunter.
It can’t see this box ball hidden in the shade garden.
But it easily spots the box balls I planted at the entrance to the property.
And yes. Look closely and you can see I took my eye off the box balls.
Infested.
Green on top, munched all the way to the bottom.
This has happened once before when we had a huge box caterpillar moth (pyrale) invasion. 2017?
And with assiduous picking and spraying of some sort of organic treatment I got them back. (Bacillus thuringiensis. I had to look it up.)
I worked and worked at it. If you see the post from June 2022 it is in all its glory.
But this year… I decided I’ve had enough.
Right plant, right place. I loved the elegance of the box. I don’t love the cat pee stink in spring.
It was a nice green full stop at the end of so much stone wall.
But I can do something else with this space. I just haven’t decided yet. But it doesn’t need to be a moth infestation feeding zone.
So with a pair of loppers, secateurs, gloves and a hunting instinct…
I started cutting back.
Squished a few.
Cut and cut.
And cut.
Golly.
I didn’t see that coming. But the deed is done.
I’m not going to dig out the whole lot of the plants just yet.
But I do need to collect all that dead matter and have a good check for any lingering caterpillars.
I did cut back the wisteria in the middle of the bed as well.
My, I am having a brutal summer.
I’ll let you know what takes its place.