In search of a better bug.

 I’ve turned over a new leaf – in fact several new leaves. I wish I hadn’t. Lace bugs, aphids, all sorts of larvae are laughing at me. Unlikely, I know, but it feels as though they are. It could just be the sound of their jaws slapping together as our plants are eaten alive.

 We’ve been doing a bit of remodelling of the garden now that it’s Spring, so both my father and I have become more protective of our plants of late (for him it’s his precious radicchio and for me it’s the roses beneath my bedroom window). I used to adopt a survival-of-the-fittest policy – if it can’t survive our seasons without constant watering and spraying, then it doesn’t belong in our garden. All that’s changed though. When you’ve lovingly planted a vibrant young rose, taken it out of its pot for the last time, ruffled its roots and nestled it in compost and chook poo, you’re bound to care more.

 But when it comes to insects, I’ve always believed that if you don’t fiddle with the food chain they’ll eat each other and leave your plants – and you – alone. Unfortunately nature seems out of whack in our backyard. Maybe it’s the ants I gleefully destroyed last year. All I know is we’ve got lemons which look like barnacle-encrusted rocks.

 I know we’ll have to resort to sprays, but the thing about science is that it goes for the quick fix. You may remember the kids at school who liked to show off in chemistry class by making things explode and setting off the fire alarm. You don’t think they went on to work in a bank do you? No, they’re the ones coming up with the chemicals to kill specific bugs. They didn’t care about the consequences then, and they don’t now. If a beneficial bug is killed in the process, it means as little to them as setting alight Smelly Kelly's tie with a Bunsen Burner.

 And then there are the botanists; they’re just as bad. They spend their lives fiddling with the glamour part of the profession, cross-breeding and grafting to make new species of plants so they can name them after themselves. Meanwhile, the insects look forward to sampling the new addition to their menu: ‘I understand it’s a slightly crisper leaf, just a hint of bitterness, very good with balsamic vinegar and shredded parmesan’.

 We don’t want to use chemicals willy-nilly, but if a girl has to buy lemons for her gin and tonic when they grow in her backyard, something’s got to give. The beneficial insects aren’t there, there aren’t enough of them or they have so much food to choose from that they only eat the bad ones for half an hour and then take the rest of the day off for a snooze in the sun.

 The other thing about beneficial insects is how to tell the good guys from the bad guys – it’s not as though they wear white hats. Even if they did, you’d need a microscope to see them. If we can clone a sheep – and let’s face it we’re really short of sheep aren’t we? – then surely we can fiddle with some DNA and come up with just one super-beneficial insect. It would have the speed of thought and grace of the preying mantis, the persistence of the parasitic wasp and the insecticidal tendencies of the assassin bug. I think it should be a wasp, with a loud buzz so we have time to get out of the way. And if we could make it furry, like a bee, it could give the leaves a shine while it’s eating the bad guys.

 And while the scientists are making that one, maybe they could turn their attention to a faster compost worm. I’m tired of waiting weeks for compost. We need a better, faster, hungrier worm, one with teeth – so it can eat and digest plastic and broken light globes. Maybe it could have spikes like an echidna, to cut through the garbage faster. I want to be able to hear munching sounds coming from my compost bin when I’m twenty metres away. Some c’mon guys, let’s have a sharper compost worm for the New Year – the Composter 2011! Then you could have a bucket of compost worms in the office instead of a shredder.