Ticks
Ixodes, Dermacentor & Amblyomma spp.
Not a plant pest at all, and the most dangerous animal in the garden. A blood-feeder rather than a sap-feeder, and it belongs in a bestiary all the same.
How to know it
A flat, eight-legged arachnid from the size of a poppy seed to a small pea, dark brown to reddish, with no wings and no antennae. Unfed nymphs are the size of a pinhead and are the stage that transmits most disease, which is exactly why they are so easily missed. The deer tick that carries Lyme disease has a plain dark body and no white markings.
What you'll see
- A tick attached to skin, most often at the back of the knee, the waistband, the armpit, the hairline or behind the ear.
- An expanding red rash, sometimes with a clear center, in the days or weeks after a bite.
- Flu-like symptoms — fever, aches, fatigue — in the weeks after gardening in tick country.
- Ticks caught on a white cloth dragged over long grass and leaf litter at the garden edge.
- Deer, mice and chipmunks using the garden, which are what carry ticks in.
Where it comes from
Three feeding stages over two years, each taking a blood meal from a different animal — usually a mouse or a chipmunk first, then a larger mammal, then a deer. That first meal on a small rodent is where most of the disease is picked up. They cannot jump or fly; they climb a grass stem, hold their front legs out, and wait for something to brush past.
Long grass, leaf litter, woodland edges and shaded, humid ground. Ticks dry out fast, so a sunny mown lawn is almost tick-free while the shady boundary two meters away is not. Numbers are rising with milder winters and larger deer populations.
Dealing with it
- Remove an attached tick promptly with fine-tipped tweezers: grip as close to the skin as possible and pull steadily straight out. Do not twist, burn or smother it.
- Wash the bite, note the date, and watch for a rash or fever over the following weeks. Prompt removal — within a day — greatly reduces transmission risk.
- Check yourself, children and dogs after every session in long grass, particularly the hairline and the backs of the knees.
- Tumble-dry gardening clothes on high heat for ten minutes, which kills ticks that heat and washing may not.
- Seek medical advice for any rash or unexplained fever after a bite.
Keeping it out
- Keep the lawn mown and make a meter-wide dry barrier of gravel or wood chip between the lawn and any woodland edge — ticks will not readily cross it.
- Clear leaf litter, long grass and brush piles at the boundary, and keep them dry and open.
- Wear long trousers tucked into socks, and treat clothing with permethrin where tick-borne disease is common.
- Discourage deer and rodents: fence deer out, and keep woodpiles and bird-seed spills away from the house.
- Encourage the birds, opossums and lizards that eat them — an opossum is a formidable tick predator.
What it goes for
No plants. This entry is here for the gardener, not the garden.
Who hunts it for you
- Garden birdsPasseriformes Both things are true: birds strip your currants and a brood of blue tits takes several thousand caterpillars out of one fruit tree in a fortnight. Net what you must and welcome them everywhere else — a nest box near the apples is worth more than a spray. Grow to recruit it: Echinacea,Elderberry,English holly,Goldenrod,Rudbeckia,Sunflower
See also
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's bestiary at cottagegardencompanion.com