Insect week in the orchard

This week was insect week. The royal entomology society uses it to raise awareness for all ages to learn more about insects. It’s a celebration of the incredibly busy, mostly unseen world that’s so vitally important to us and our world. So I thought this post could be about the insect life I have found in the orchard this week.

The orchard has been full of life, its incredible. As I have said before we are trying to work with nature and not spray anything…even resorting to not using organic orchard sprays. It’s incredibly laborious and I could not have achieved this commercially, especially in the current climate but this is the third year and it seems to be working. I’m still learning as I go and each year and season will be different but its very rewarding! It amazes me how much life is in what would be seen to be an area of monoculture. It just goes to show how important orchards are, even formal, very tidy ones.

The big noticeable thing is watching these unseen creatures appear where there’s a suitable food source…funnily enough, I’m good at that too! However to see ants, aphids, hoverfly larvae and Ladybirds at all stages all in the perfect place is just fascinating. Then there’s the birds…but its insect week not bird week I hear you say. However, birds make up an important part of the orchard insect habitat. I have found thriving insect colony’s in discarded nests over winter, some bugs like to eat the bird poo, birds also like to eat the bugs of course…good and bad.

Part of having a thriving habitat is having a piece of everything. The key is to not let any of it get out of control and be the dominant feature. It’s all about balance. I may not have leaves as amazing as when I was spraying and killing everything on the farm but the trees are managing just fine. Some of the bugs we see as bad also actually eat fungi such as powdery mildew which is a problem on the trees and getting worse due to the changing climate. They don’t eradicate it but I’m sure it helps more than if they weren’t there. So after waging war on certain insects for a decade (and even longer as a horticulturalist) I wouldn’t be without them….perhaps just a few less “baddies”!

Below is a taster of what I have found this week, I plan to do proper factsheets on important “good” insects and “bad” insects in the future.

For more info on Insect week go to www.insectweek.org or www.royensoc.co.uk