If you're someone who has a pressure for cut flowers, our environment and wants to make
the world more beautiful, you're in the right place.
Whether you're growing flowers for pleasure or profit, I'm on a mission to empower flower
enthusiasts and professionals to help change the world around me.
Whether you're just starting out and needing help in hand or looking to scale a substantial
flower business, I'm your cut flower woman.
Welcome to the Cut Flower Public House.
So thank you very much Tessa for joining me today.
Just tell us a little bit about you, where you're from.
Tell us a little bit about your business and so on.
Yeah, I'm in Windy, cold Brighton, West Spring.
Lady Bear Plant Care has been around longer than I've owned it, but I took over the rains
in November 2018, so coming up this year will be five years.
Before I bought the company, I worked in marketing and I worked on lots of different
brands across a long period of time.
Then I had twins and commuting from Brighton to London five days a week wasn't really going
to be possible.
So a great friend of mine who owned an amazing business called Plants for Presence also owned
Lady Bear Plant Care, but as Plants for Presence was really growing, they couldn't really give
it the love and attention it deserves and I bought it from them.
So five years ago this summer I bought the company.
Wow, five years I can't believe that.
Wow.
So what did you do?
You worked in marketing before and then your Lady Bear Plant Care.
So tell us about what Lady Power Plant Care does and its biological control.
Just tell us what's his ethos, why you do it.
So the simple, simple, simple way of explaining what I sell, which biological controls, is
that I sell predators for common plant pests, both for house plants and outdoor gardeners.
So the good bugs, the bad bugs that eat your plants and all of the controls on the site
are pet safe, plants safe, human safe.
So they don't eat plants in the way that the pests that we're controlling, they feed on
plants, these creatures feed on the pests.
So we're introducing a biological control, which obviously isn't harming the environment,
it's just we're addressing the balance that we've got, which we've got an issue on.
All of these things are naturally occurring in the UK and we're just boosting the population
of them because by growing amazing flowers and food in our gardens and farms we are boosting
the pest population.
So we just need to put a few more predators in to balance everything out.
Do you think the UK market has increased for biological control or the interest in biological
rather than spraying our roses with rose clear or whatever happens to be to get rid of?
Oh, yeah, definitely.
As people as choose towards the environment changes and how biodiversity is being affected
by human behaviour, lots of great publicity around saving the bees, all of those things
are contributing, but also because biologicals really work and they work well when you're
a bit time poor too because they're your own little army.
So although yes, a really nasty chemical will work very quickly to kill everything and those
things that they sell you to clear aphids and thrips and things like that will only show
you those creatures on the front and the bottom.
What they don't show you is that they kill everything.
So they'll kill lady birds and they'll kill bees and everything else in the ecosystem.
They kill insects.
But they can be quite labour intensive and they don't necessarily work for a long time.
Whereas if you get the balance right of introducing predators, they'll do the job for you.
Yeah, we've just done it today.
We've introduced our predators and I think the thing you do is you're introducing, sit
on your hands and wait for nature to take its course because you can't wait for the balance
to come back up.
It's not instant.
And sometimes it might take a few rounds of introduction depending on how far the pest
problem has spread and how big an area you're trying to treat.
I tend to get people to instead of introducing me lots and lots and lots of predators at
once is introduce doses over a period of time so that each introduction is getting time
to settle in and then you introduce them more if you need to.
And just due to the life cycle of pests, it might be necessary to introduce a few more
predators to hit the next stage.
I'm sure we'll come on to nematodes and slugs.
That's always...
Yeah, so what is your bestseller?
That's interesting.
The slug is a greatseller.
It's not available at the moment.
The way that nematodes are made, they're made on a six week cycle and the whole of the
nematodes are stuck for the current six week period failed.
So we don't actually have any nematodes.
No one has any nematodes like at the moment, which is, as you can imagine, the object.
But really nowadays it's fungus nuts because it's something that affects everyone, it's
inside and it's outside and it's really super effective as well, the treatment for fungus
nuts, so the nematodes that we use to treat fungus nuts are strangely called fruit and
virgin nematodes, which confuses lots of house plant people, especially because they're
like, we're not growing fruit and veg.
But there's a great mix of nematodes in that product that hit those scarified fly populations,
which is fungus nuts.
And the reason that that might need treating twice is because the nematodes attack the
larval stage of the fly, you use the sticky traps to catch the adults, but the eggs that
are there waiting to hatch, if they haven't hatched by the time the nematodes have stopped
after about two weeks, then you'll need to do the second treatment because those eggs
are then hatching out, which is also why you need to really get a handle on the adult
population because there's no point treating the larvae if you've still got 100 adults
still laying eggs in the compost.
So it is a bit about understanding the life cycle of the pest that you're dealing with,
and it really affects how you can control them.
So obviously then next on the list would be aphids, which some people would know as green
fly or black fly.
They're born pregnant.
So that's why you might look at a plant in the morning and be like, oh, there's just
an aphid on there.
And then in the afternoon you might be like, oh my God, it's infested because they are
prolific and then you spread really, really fast, which is why if you were using even
an organic spray, then once spray once a week is not really doing the thing, you'd be needing
to spray about every day to control that population, whereas if you put a predator in,
then they will continue to feed on those aphids because that's what they eat.
And yeah, that's the other thing about things that have gone into sort of infestation stage.
The predators don't know how many aphids you've got or how many thrips you've got.
So they're not going to be more mobile or more hungry because you've got more pest.
They don't go through like a training camp, I don't think.
They're not going to be too much because you've got a really bad infestation.
So they'll just eat their normal level of food.
They're not greedy like humans.
They'll just eat a normal level of food to keep them sustained, which is why you might
need to use something either more ferocious or introduce more predators.
You've got loads and loads and loads of pests if it's kind of got a little bit out of control.
Yeah.
Lots of anglers and that's your right.
And the sticky dryer, I'm convinced they come in the compost.
They do.
Yeah.
So the more that we use organic untreated, peat-free compost, more pests will arrive already in
the compost because the compost hasn't been chemically treated.
It's got lots of organic matter in it, which is what they really love.
So they do come in the compost, which is why we're getting so many.
They also come in things like a supermarket, basil plant, that's a classic place for them
to arrive in your home.
Yeah.
It's on something really simple, like some basil that you've bought.
And they love eating roots.
They're really good at that.
Yeah.
So for some plants, that's really not a problem.
A few fungus that love eating the roots were a really well-established plant.
It's not necessarily going to cause any problems, but if you're trying to grow seedlings, the
seedlings hardly have any roots.
So that's just them obliterated.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We have thousands of the things.
It's like sticky traps are brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
And like you say, it gets the adult population.
So that's fungus gnats, which I'm very used to.
I'm used to aphids, and we're now trying that in our rose tunnel.
This green fly came really early this year, I'm thinking.
Yeah.
So it's like, woof.
Yeah.
And I think people kind of feel like with all pests that they just disappear over winter
and they're just gone.
But they're not.
They're just overwintering somewhere.
So the more pests that we have the previous year, the more pests we have, unless we do
something in the autumn, which is always a good idea to have a big clean out and put
a load of predators in the meorton, which most people will be like, well, no, I'm not
bothered anymore.
You know, I've got all my crop.
I've done for the year.
But actually, you're just causing yourself problems for the next spring because all of
those pests have gotten overwintering stage and they'll all be back with a vengeance
the following year.
Even though I know it's really cold now and it's cold spring, we don't really get prolonged
cold spells in winter anymore.
So all of those pests that are overwintering are perfectly fine.
And they would have been anyway.
They're native to Northern Europe.
So they don't just magically appear in spring, like brand new.
You know what I am?
Brand new.
Or like we don't import them in.
I mean, obviously something's coming from abroad, but we don't ship them in.
Here's the aphids for this year.
It's your lot.
You can dump this lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm sure the slugs are waiting underneath my overwinter dahlias that we left outside.
Ready to come up.
So they start mating on Valentine's Day, don't they?
So I think they're already mating and ready for me.
Yeah.
So there'll be a lot of eggs catching out in the soil.
Snails are already everywhere in the garden.
And yeah, the slugs are definitely about.
And we definitely saw them when the first lot of rain came after that really dry spell.
There was a lot of slugs starting to appear.
And I still haven't been in the slugs.
I got that down.
But the number's story is back in like two and a half weeks now.
So it's not long until we can start treating them.
Because we wouldn't remove all the overwintering material until probably middle of April, late
April, late April, early May now, I think, depends on the weather, probably early May.
So then we'll be treating then.
So let's, yeah, get the slug population under control.
Yeah.
And normally if the supply was consistent, we would be treating for slugs from the soil
temperature, eating five degrees, which for most people is mid-February now.
And then every six weeks, right through to when it starts to drop below five degrees
again.
So that would be October time.
If you do that, then you're unlikely to really have a problem with slugs.
You may still have a problem with snails.
But that's much easier to catch.
So, yeah, and with slugs, you'll reduce your population every year, but you probably will
never eradicate.
Something like vying-weevil is possible to eradicate them from the garden by blitzing
it really consistently for one year and then the following year being quite on it.
You may then actually completely get rid of fine-weevil, which are very damaging pests
from your garden, especially damaging for things in pots and for all the metals.
They'll wake up in the spring, the grubs, and eat entire root systems from adult plants.
And you'll just find that as you go to move the pot away from the house for the summer,
spring and summer, it just can't just kill, it can't just kill, it's over because it's
on their root system anymore.
And then in the adult population, they'll eat little notches out of the sides of leaves.
They're not like caterpillars or slugs and snails where they'll eat holes into leaves.
They eat little notches to the outside of the leaf, so they end up making the leaf look
like a little chick-saw piece.
Yeah, because with vying-weevil, the thing about that is, yes, I eat all the roots, you
don't realise it's going on.
And then you kind of move it, like you say.
Reminds me of a wick.
It's kind of like you've got this top, it's got nothing to hold it on at all when it's
just so loose and you go, look, where are the roots gone?
And that's the vying-weevil.
And your right pot is the biggest, you know, agapantas pot, so something is the biggest
problem with them.
Yeah, really problematic.
But quite easy to spot in the summer, the adults, and they are nocturnal, so you might
have to pop out at night.
And you come in, you definitely get them, we get them popping into the kitchen.
Yes.
Hello, I've come in for a cup of tea.
You know, one of my customers had them upstairs, they used to climb up the stairs.
She totally eradicated the chair.
Yeah.
So the big ones are aphids, vying-weevil, slugs, snails.
What else have we got?
Yeah.
Thrips for people growing flowers.
Yeah, and to draw a reason.
Oh, houseplants, thrips of disaster.
But the way that you can tell that you've got thrips is that new flowers might bloom
and they'll be brown or brass, slightly brass.
So they'll look almost moldy when they bloom and they look like they've been fine and then
they bloom and they're all raggedy.
And that's because the thrips will go into the flower buds.
But on the leaves, you can tell that you've got thrips because there's kind of paler silvery
areas on the leaf where their thrips have been sap sucking and then it does black spots
within those silvery patches.
Thrips and spider mite are both sap suckers, so they can create similar damage or you might
not know which you've got.
But with thrips, there's patches of silvery with dots in and that kind of new growth looking
ravished.
So new leaves, new flowers, just you've not seen anything on there and then they just
look really ravished a bit like if you've had a really bad aphid infestation and you
get new growth and it's just a bit wilted, I think it looks a bit like wilted like it
hasn't been watered.
Yeah, and then when it's warm, the spider mite you can really notice because leaves brown.
So if you haven't caused it for the modeling stage, leaves just brown and then you'll
notice that there's webbing and it's so fine that you might not notice the webbing until
you touch the plant and you see on this fine netting webbing almost like a really thin
pair of tights on the plant and that's spider mite and they use that webbing to get around.
So yes, there's plenty of that out there.
It's like this army is already in the moment, it's like let them in, here they come.
But I think it's about...
Yeah.
So how do we avoid them or how do we spot them?
Are we just going out and having a look at all our plants all the time?
What are the main things we should be looking for?
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I think it's good to get a bit up close to personal in plants anyway to see how they
are because it's not always a pest.
It might be overwatering, underwatering and nutrient deficiency.
It might be plants that I've been put out too early and it's too cold.
The garden sense is really good at encouraging that.
So you'll go around the garden centre really early season and see dahlias and flower.
I think that that's fine, compliment the garden.
So I think just being really mindful of all the things that are kind of sexual plants
and then when it's a pest, if you're not sure of the damage, then you might have to
have a little investigate to see if you can find the pest because if you've got holes
in the leaves, it could be slugs or snails, but in which case you're probably going to
have seen them or if you go out on a wet evening, you might see them or there'll be a slimy
trail or there'll be snail poo on the leaves as a real telltale sign.
And caterpillars tend to be more of a defoliator by which means they really go for it when
they get on to a leaf.
They'll eat the leaf until there's just the spine down the middle of that.
And also when they've just started eating, the leaves look a bit like stone glass windows
where you've got the green leaf and then you've got what looks a bit like holes covered
in wispery paper or tracing paper because it's called windowing where they've eaten
the back or the front of the leaf and let just left membranes.
And then the other one that we should probably talk about, especially when people are growing
in polytunnels and greenhouses, is white fly.
But these are tiny little white moths they look like and they, you might not notice
that then you move something and a big cloud will form above the head.
And that's a white fly and again, they're sapsuckers and they will make the leaves quite
sticky in the way that sometimes aphids can, which then might attract a disease.
They layer their eggs on the underside of the leaves and they look like scales.
The great product for them is like a tiny wasp, good in in kasya and they layer their eggs
inside this white fly egg which gets rid of the white fly.
But they can really get out of hand and as I'm saying before, like with the in kasya
predators, they don't know that you've got tons and tons and tons of white fly.
So it might be a case of a big cling down before you introduce the predator so that they
can kind of take over from you, but they won't be able to overpower it.
There's lots of predators that won't be able to overpower in infestation.
You might need to do something manually first that help them to do their job.
Some things are really hungry and that's easy to just stick them in.
Like for spider mite, there's a product called Phytocinus and it's super powerful.
So you get 2,000 mites in a vial and they're faster than the spider mite and they're really
hungry and they can, you know, have a litter rate for spider mite.
There must be a children's book in here somewhere about all these wonderful insects
and all these predators.
I've seen that all the children's books kind of, um, lady birds are usually hero worship.
Yes.
But your butterflies, the tricky one isn't it?
Because you're like, oh they are lovely, but baby caterpillars.
They're not, baby caterpillars are particularly hungry.
They must be a children's book.
Yeah, it could be a bit frightening with all this infestation.
So do you have a guide on anywhere that people can have a look at or can they talk to you?
How can they find out what they've got their problem is?
So the website has lots of areas to help.
So if you don't know what it is, there's a whole section on finding out what you've
got.
And then once you think you're going to shortlist it down, there's pages on each pest so you
can move it up on the pest to decide whether or you definitely not got it, what you can
do about it and then that might be, we'll probably link you through to the product that
you might want to use.
And in some cases, there's a selection of products and that might be a choice of how
much you want to spend, the area you need to cover, how bad your infestation is.
And it's fine to get in touch as well.
Ideally via email, but can get in touch via social media.
And if you're not really not sure, then just get in touch.
But there is loads of stuff.
And the other thing that's really useful, especially if you found a bug, is Google Lens.
So you take a photo of the bug and then use Google Lens, which is like putting the words
into Google, you put the picture into Google and it tells you what it is.
So you've got like a really interesting caterpillar.
It will tell you what it is and what it's about.
I haven't used Google Lens.
It's great as well if I identify plants, but you wouldn't need that.
And I've never used it to identify plants, but I could use it to identify insects.
And we've got a lot of those.
So who's inspired you in your career?
Tell me about it.
So I would have to say the person that I bought my business from.
I would never be here if it wasn't family doing this.
She told me I could do it and that I can find everything I needed to know and that it would
work around my life.
And she's totally right.
Five years on.
Yeah, because I mean, you sort of step up and I didn't know you had twins.
You stepped on that ladder.
I'm going to start my own business.
I'm going to be an entrepreneur.
You work all the hours, God sends.
It's hard.
You've got to put all the energy in the beginning.
And now five years down the line, Emily was right.
Yeah.
And it made it was chaos at the beginning.
The children were in childcare two mornings a week.
And I just started, I was learning constantly.
I was very lucky that my suppliers are happy for me to ask them just a question.
I don't need to ask them just questions anymore.
But I still have technical team that I can lean on if someone's got something really
odd going on or if they've tried something and it hasn't worked, we can try and figure
out why because they work with commercial growers and there's probably nothing that
they haven't seen or problems that haven't encountered.
So yeah, there has been lots of support.
But yes, I'm in a position now where even though the business is way busier than it
was five years ago, I kind of have the measure of it and I can drop everything when the
teachers go on strike.
Yes.
I mean, not drop everything.
I will still be sending orders out tomorrow, but I can definitely spend two hours at the
trucking parking out today.
Yeah.
All those unpredictable times.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so unpredictable having two, five who are.
Whoa.
Yeah.
That's a predictable working in live insects because the postal strikes had a huge impact
on business because my products have to get there next day on the whole.
They have to get to customers next day and that just wasn't a possibility during the
postal strikes.
And funnily enough, Yodal, et cetera, do not take live insects.
They don't take anything perishable.
So I do really heavily rely on when they're not working.
It makes things very hard.
It just shows you doesn't have anything.
That little thing that just throws in, things like packaging, for instance, has gone up in
price quite heavily, hasn't it, in the last six months, unbelievably in some areas.
And the cost of stock coming to me is huge because I can't just have one big lot of stock
delivered on a monthly basis, but just die.
So I have to have several deliveries a week.
And that's probably one of the biggest expenses that's gone up for sure.
And then there's just the unavailability of stuff.
So this week in carseals, it wasn't available for dispatch yesterday.
So I couldn't get the stock for the orders that I was going to send out today, just because
there was a problem with their breeding.
And so that stock's not coming until later in the week.
And some weeks I'll order X-meni low swing larvae.
And I'll find out that I can't have low swing larvae this week.
I can have low swing larvae.
It happens with all of the different insects.
It's like a breeding product problem or a packaging problem.
So the sashos, there's a very self-contained, slow release products.
And they're on a really special machine that carefully puts these breeding colonies into
the paper sashos and then they're put on.
It's very meticulous.
But it's not going wrong, isn't it?
Yeah, we're dealing with live insects.
And it's also the customer education point on that as well.
And that quite a lot of customers have never used a live product before.
And they might do something crazy with it.
Like, I don't know, put it aside for a week before they use it.
Put it somewhere.
Just put it somewhere.
And people always are like, oh, I haven't got time.
Or I was thinking of doing it on the weekend.
Well, just do it now.
By the weekend, I've had half as many late swing larvae in that vial because they're
eating each other or just dying from starvation.
So what future plans have you got?
Still growing, still more, still what's next?
I think it's important that I stay within my niche.
So I won't be expanding into watering cans and, I don't know, animal caps and tea towels.
You know, that's not what I sell.
I sell products for plant pests.
And I don't sell products for other pests.
I don't sell products for wasps.
I don't eat plants.
I don't sell products for clothes months.
You know, it's stuff that eats plants.
That's it.
The stuff that's borderline earwigs, for example, they will eat your flower petals, but they
will also eat aphids.
So it's a tricky one.
And this year we'll be launching, you can make yourself but little shelters for earwigs.
So they collect them for one part of the garden and you can pop them in the mother
area of the garden when they're being more useful.
But yeah, it's staying niche.
I also want it for the time being to stay being me and that I answer customer questions.
I pack nearly every order and that suits the business and it means I can provide consistent
service.
But it does mean that I have to be able to do that.
Which is fine for the time being.
I'd rather keep it small, keep it focused.
Yeah, brilliant.
So where can people find you?
LadybirdPlantcare.co.uk?
LadyK?
And I'd like to talk about the plant care on Instagram.
Those are the main places really.
Brilliant.
Okay, and we'll put those all in the show notes so people can get hold of you.
I am now going to go and use Google Lens and I'm going to go out with my magnifying glass
and see what I've got.
I know I've got, I already know I've got Undersnite and I already know I've got Greenfly.
But I pop and I know I've got the stuff.
No, it's interesting.
Yeah.
Invest in the hand lens for the light.
Oh my goodness, this is now becoming off to Amazon to get our hand lens with the light
on.
What's going on?
Yeah.
So you can really kind of get right underneath the backs of leaves and have a quick, have
a look at what's going on.
I should go and do that then.
That to me sounds like an Instagram reel.
Ros out there with her magnifying glass.
Yeah, you out there with your magnifying glass.
And then taking photos and putting them all going again.
That's my point.
I got sent us some amazing photos last year of amazing caterpillars, the hairiest asplasia
pencil.
We've got a really unusual caterpillar that comes to us.
So I will take the picture of it during the year and somebody locally went mad for them
and came to it loads of photos.
They're red and black and I can't remember what the name of them was.
But they were like quite rare and there were people jumping up and down and I was thinking,
no, don't make it rare.
You can just let them take them.
Go and cut them.
I know I'm thinking for some people that I know have got amazing gardens that have bought
their children and butterfly rearing kids.
So I'm like, wow, that's brave.
I think because people don't necessarily think that the butterfly was actually a caterpillar.
It kind of doesn't, you think that's flies beautiful and their bee with the bees and
life is beautiful, but obviously it's coming from a caterpillar.
So yeah, and it's just about that.
Isn't it?
Yeah.
And you might have a little sacrificial corner of your garden like I do where I put all
the nails.
We have one called last thing found.
That's what we put.
How sacrificial lost them.
And that includes plants that we don't know what they are.
That goes in or old tulip bulbs.
That's going to, everything goes in the lost and found.
So goodness knows what's going to happen in there, but we've got a lost and found.
So Tessa, I want to thank you for coming over.
It's brilliant.
Or as always, it makes us all more aware.
It makes us get out there.
Just look at our plants and also biological control.
You know, how can we avoid whatever we do affecting the environment, which has, you know,
I'm really hot on and you are too and we just don't want to do it.
I just have my button.
I think that's it.
More button.
Bring more button.
Lovely.
Thank you very much for joining me today.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I look forward to next week's episode.
Please don't forget to subscribe and rate a review on your podcast app.
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For farmers or those who want to be from our farmers, we have cutflower farming, growth
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All of the links are below.
I look forward to getting to know you all.
Bye.
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