Little grey worms - ugghh!

I am in my garden everyday, checking things out and it never ceases to amaze me when I completely overlook some massive invasion. I have a nice patch of Lysimachia punctata 'Alexander' in a front bed, aka variegated yellow Loosestrife.

Last night, I glanced at my plant and noticed that the leaves were quite lacy and not in a good way, they were full of holes. My first thought was the dreaded Japanese beetles had been attacking my plant. It is that same kind of damage that they afflict on my Ampelopsis 'Elegans', variegated Porcelain Berry vines and grape vines. However on closer inspection I found a different culprit, little grey worms and as it turns out there were hundreds of them.
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Frequently you will read that often you can ignore an invader in your garden as it will just yield a few leaves with holes in them. I try and follow that when I can and be as kind to the environment as possible. I started in handpicking the worms and dropping them in soapy water. When I would touch them they would roll up in a ball and drop to the ground. So I hit upon putting some newspaper under the plant and shaking the branches, to cause the little creeps to drop in piles on the newspaper and then I dumped that into the soapy water. I literally spend a half hour, shaking and dumping.

Today, I rechecked the plant and found more worms, so it is onto phase 2. I sprayed the plant with Spinosad. Spinosad is classed as an organic insecticide. I think it has a fascinating history, here is a snippet from Wikipedia: "The active ingredient is derived from a naturally occurring soil dwelling bacterium called Saccharopolyspora spinosa, reportedly collected from soil in an abandoned rum distillery on a Caribbean Island in 1982 by a scientist on vacation. It has not been found in nature since that time, and was subsequently described as a new species." So how cool is that, on vacation, scoping out an old rum factory and you discover a new species and one that can help the average gardener get rid of nuisance pests in an environmentally friendly way.

I haven't been able to ID my invader yet but hopefully the Spinosad will do it's thing and it will be a moot point. I will just have to mark my calendar for next July - check Lysimachia for worms, just like I had to mark it in April - check Columbine for sawfly, which was another devastating first this year. The Columbine sawflies are the reason I got the Spinosad and they are really bad, it's not holes in the leaves, it is literally no leaves at all.