Dealing with garden thieves and Isabella’s phantom pregnancy

I am not actually talking about real thieves who might steal your garden gnomes etc. But instead we need to deal with those pesky plant thieves that will stop your plants thriving through the summer.

As if getting the garden ready for summer wasn’t enough, Cruella (my wife) suddenly declared to me “I have big news, we are going to be grandparents”. Now I know the idiot son is not that stupid, so upon further enquiry she declared that one of her girls “was with chick”! More of this idiocy later, on with the gardening.

13th April 2026. Things I have been doing lately.

• Dealing with various types of suckers
• Stopping Chlorosis
• Freeing in ground sprinklers
• Dealing with Isabella’s phantom pregnancy

Dealing with various types of suckers. Most plants – especially older ones – will try and sucker. Suckers are those bright green little baby shoots that pop out on the lower branches of your trees. Suckers are basically the cheats of the plant world they try and pop out below the main growth so that they can get the first lot of food. They won’t kill a tree but they can slightly weaken it, reduce the size of fruit, and if they get really big look unsightly. The photos below shows various suckers.

The photos above show various suckers on fruit trees and lastly on a grapevine. To deal with suckers all you have to do is pull down sharply on the suckers and it should tear away from the plant. It is supposed to be best to tear rather than cut.

In addition to suckers on stems, you will occasionally see a root sucker popping up from the base of the plant or even emerging from the ground.. In most cases there is no point in trying to retrieve these and potting them on, as they will just be base rootstock that your plant has been grafted on to.

In the photo below you can see a root sucker emerging from one of my figs. In this case as I grew it from a cutting I know it is true root stock. If you want you can cut these off with a sharp knife, dip it in rooting compound and then grow it on.

Stopping Chlorosis. Another garden thief this time of year is Chlorosis. This can be seen on many plants especially citrus, Stephanotis and roses. The symptoms are yellowing leaves especially along leaf veins. Chlorosis is quite common in the Costa Blanca because of our Alkaline soil. There are other causes but the main one is lack of iron which results in the yellowing. Iron in itself is not a plant food, but instead it is an enabler and aids plants to take up other foods. See photos below.

Most general purpose plant foods will have traces of iron, but when you see yellowing as in the photos it will tend to be a need for more iron. In Spain iron is known as “hierro quelatado”. Normally it comes as granules and you mix these with water to make a “Rosé wine” type colour. Water directly into the roots and not on the leaves. Now is the best time of year to do this. The photo below shows my iron mixture before full dilution. I pour a glug into the watering can and then mix to the right colour.

Freeing in ground sprinklers. Many gardens on the Costa Blanca will have in ground sprinklers sometimes on timers that pop up in the lawn or to water selected flower beds. Don’t just assume that these will go on watering correctly forever. As they are in the ground weeds and grasses will gradually choke off their function in two ways.

Firstly, grass and seeds will grow over the pop up sprinkler and stop it popping up thereby only watering the small area close to the sprinkler. Secondly, if they do pop up the exit area for the water can easily get choked with weeds growing into the stem thereby either stopping watering completely or creating an uneven watering pattern.

To overcome all of the above you have to get out there on your hands and knees and clean each sprayer individually. Given their starting point can be deep in the ground this can be difficult. So the simplest way I have found is to turn on your system only slightly till the pop up function works but without any great spray. Then go round each sprinkler pull them fully up, clean them out and then finish by trimming the grass around them so it does not impede. The photos below show my efforts.

Dealing with Isabella’s phantom pregnancy. Gardening is my solace in a troubled world. I wander round, sowing here, pruning there talking to plants and discussing world affairs with my bees. I don’t ask much, just to be left alone to get on with things. But alas, Cruella (my wife) often has other ideas.

Her latest announcement that we were to become grandparents is just one more example of her chicken idiocy. It seems that Isabella one of her chickens (full name Isabella Ding Dong) has gone broody and has taken to spending the whole day sitting in a flower bed and refusing to move. See photos below.

Cruella has insisted that she must be pregnant and we should prepare for a new arrival. I have told her not to be stupid as we do not have a male chicken (I am not allowed to say c**k in front of her girls). To back up her argument she told me she has consulted the definitive book on the subject: “The Common Sense Book of Chick and Chicken Care” by Dr Benjamin Squawk. I will let you know what happens, but she has already started knitting and planning a chick reveal party.