Plague.....or not....

Potted plants line the front edge of our balcony. F has tried growing various things over the three full summers we have had here. The only consistent thing has been Cape Daisies. Bamboo died when chaffer grubs ate off its roots, as did most things that year - melons, wavy grass stuff, kumquat, even some of the Cape Daisies. The chaffer grubs were legion. It took us a while to work out what the problem was, and what to do about it... by then too late for most of the plants.

A year later and the problem was woolly aphids.  Everything was getting sucked to death and F was constantly washing them off the plants. We started trying to grow chilies that year and fought a valiant battle with aphids, and so it seems did all our neighbours. There were aphids on everything.

Last year there was a human plague going round but the potted garden was remarkably free of anything that reached plague proportions and we got a good harvest off our chilies.

Winters are hard on our potted garden.  The sea throws salt at the balcony.  It sticks to the windows after it has finished killing off all but the hardiest plants, and the Spring comes and we start all over again. This year the Cape daisies have been joined by other varieties of daisy - usually described as 'common'.  There are some basil plants, a scented geranium (we start one every year), lots more succulents than we have had in the past (they are hardy), and a small seed pot with moss rose seeds in it (thank you for reminding us Madsnapper Sandra and Beau).

Today we were mooching about the balcony, F pulling off the dead flowers when she noticed some little bugs on a pink daisy. The pink daisy shares a huge pot with a yellow daisy. Pink daisy flower centres were mobbed with bugs sucking up nectar. Yellow daisy was entirely bug free.

So which daisy would you have in your plant pot? Bugs or no bugs?