An Insect Primer

Every organic garden has insects. Some of the insects are pest and some are not. As I frequently tell my son, we’re outside, that’s where the bugs live. The question then is what to do about the insects that want to harm your organic vegetable garden. If you were not an organic gardner, there was a time you would spray some horribly toxic chemical and kill every single bug in the garden and create the silent spring in your own patch.

We all want to live healthy, grow healthy, safe food, and don’t want to kill all the insects. We want to manage the insects so that they can live and our vegetables can thrive. A few pests in your garden won’t harm your production and will provide food for the natural pest predators that patrol your garden patch. We want to encourage the population growth of the good insects and manage the harmful pest population down to level that does not harm out vegetable production.

In order to control the insects, you have to identify the bugs. Spend time with your plants and learn to recognize the signs of insect damage to your fruits and vegetables. After a time, you will learn to recognize which insect is causing the damage to your plants. If you keep a garden journal, your experience in recognize the insect pests will result in a steeper learning curve and healthier plants. It is vitally important that you recognize the particular scourge that your a fighting before taking action. Remember, most if the insects in your garden are harmless. We only want to control the problem bugs.

The sooner you are aware of an invasion, the quicker and easier it is combat the problem. Use traps as an early warning system. You may ask your self, what is this trap of which you speak? There are cover traps, sticky traps, handpicking, and spraying forcefully with water. These methods work to remove most of the pests from the affected plants. There are numerous pheromone traps that attract the insects by emitting sex hormone that lures the unsuspecting varmints into a pit of despair. Codling moths are attracted to red spherical sticky traps.

If handpicking and mechanical control fails to protect your garden patch, you move on to natural sprays and dusts. Some insects can be fed to death. Dry wheat bran, when ingested by Colorado Potato Beetles causes the beetle to explode. When you dust plants infested with cutworms, the cutworms die because they cannot metabolize the cornmeal. Some folks report that a dust of one part salt and two parts flour will control the cabbage worm.

Sometimes spraying is more effective than dusting. You can spray bug juice, insecticidal soap’ garlic spray, horticultural oil spray, and hot pepper spray. Make sure that you read the directions before use. You can increase the effectiveness of your insecticidal soap by adding isopropyl alcohol (about one half cup of alcohol to each quart of soap) to you insecticidal soap. Add ing isopropyl alcohol to your horticultural oils likewise increases effectiveness. Combine one cup of alcohol, a half teaspoons of Volck oil, and one quart of water. The alcohol will kill the bugs on contact and the oil will smother the unseen baby bugs and the eggs. You can use this spray daily until the population of varmints is under control.

Did you know you can make your own hot pepper spray. Get all kinds of MacGuyver on it. Chop or grind hot peppers until you have a half cup of fine particles of hot peppers. Mix the half cup with a pint of water. Strain out the solid bits and you have spray. Even easier is using hot pepper powder powder (for example cayenne pepper) and water.

You have lots of natural options to control insect pests in your organic vegetable garden. So get out in your garden, pay attention, and have fun. Remember, don’t panic.

Organic Mole Control – Who Knew Juicy Fruit Would Kill the Varmints

Have you ever had a mole in your organic vegetable garden? How about your yard? Have you wondered how to control the mole with organic methods? Lets get rid of those pesky varmints!

First of all, lets dispel a myth…moles don’t eat plants. They eat lots of insects like grubs, beetles, and earthworms. Don’t mess with my worms Mr. Mole! While chasing their food underground (moles can dig up to fifteen feet per hour) they damage roots systems and spread disease from plant to plant. Then voles and field mice (who do eat plants) follow behind in the mole tunnels wreaking havoc and destruction in your garden. There are organic method to control the varmints.

You know you have moles when you see their tunnels. Moles are solitary and use their tunnels only once. As hard as it is to believe, all those tunnels are probably the work of just one or two varmints. Moles hunt all year and just move down below the frost with the earthworms in the winter.

So how do we organically control the moles once we are infested? Traps can be effective in controlling moles; but the great hunter must be persistent. Trapping is easiest in the early spring at the first sight of the mole ridges. Step one is to figure out which tunnels are active. To do this, you mark the tunnels with stakes and press them down with your feet. Come back in a day or two and the tunnels that are raised up again are active. Put your traps in those runs. The most effective traps are choker traps and harpoon traps. Follow the manufacturers instructions in placing and operating the traps. Remember, be persistent and drive out the little buggers.

If you like the hunt, you can try to dig out the mole. Moles are active at different times of day. It may be possible to see the ridge moving as the mole moves along through your little patch of heaven. If you see the ridging up, put your shovel in the ground behind the mole and flip the varmint out into a bucket.

Moles love Juicy Fruit. They are fatally attracted to it. The main trick is to make sure that there is none of your scent on the chewing gum (yes – Juicy Fruit chewing gum…like when you were a kid). So glove up, take the gum out of the wrapper, and roll up the gum like a cigarette. Poke a hole in a fresh mole tunnel and put the gum in the tunnel. Repeat this process four to six time placing the gum in the tunnel about six inches apart. The moles eat the gum, can’t digest it, and depart this mortal coil. Look for mole activity to cease in a couple of days.

If you believe that prevention is the best cure, you can repel moles with cat litter or windmills. Dump several scoops of cat litter in the moles burrow and the strong smell will repel the mole. Moles don’t like vibrations. You can put commercially available windmills in the mole run. When the wind blows, the windmill spins creating vibrations that repel the moles. An alternative is a child’s pinwheel stuck in the run or a glass soda bottle placed open end up. The wind blows causing vibrations…you get the idea.

If you happen to like cats, an outside cat will hunt down and kill your moles. Apparently the moles don’t taste very good and your cat won’t eat them. There is also the legend of castor oil and dish soap. It appears that the combination works for some folks and not for others. Fell free to give that a try.

There are lots of options for organic control of moles in your vegetable and plant garden. Don’t be afraid of the mole. Make sure to spend time in your garden and observe your plants. Detection always precedes removal. Get outside and get dirty!

Solarize: Kill Disease and Weeds, Improve Yields

We used to believe that certain plant disease pathogens lived in the soil and could not be eliminated. Pestilence like verticillium wilt fusarium wilt were believed to be with us and just had to be tolerated. In the past ten years, some enterprising Israelis came up with solarizing. It is an excellent way to kill weeds, fungus, and general pests that live in your soil. It is all natural and requires no chemicals. Solarizing has been tested at universities across the US and by extension programs all over the country. It must become part of your arsenal in developing and maintaining the healthiest garden on your street, in your county…you get the idea. You want to feed people healthy food. What is healthier than chemical free pest control? How does it work?

The process produces lots of high heat and humidity in the soil which pasteurizes the soil destroying all the pestilence contained there. It rids your plot of harmful bacteria, fungi, many nematodes, almost all insect larvae, and the weed seeds near the surface of your soil. Testing has shown solarization to be effective against the verticillium wilt in tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplant. It whacks fusarium wilt in your tomatoes and onions. Solarizing also eliminates rhizoctonia in potatoes and onions and nematodes that attack your potatoes and other crops. Unbelievable isn’t it? Testing has shown all of these benefits and more.

Solarizing also helps your soil produce healthy strong plants. Solarized beds have been documented to produce greater yields after the process is complete. It seems that the bad juju is eliminated and the good organisms survive and thrive. Fungi that play a role in nutrient utilization survive the heating process. Very Cool!

Now that you know what solarizing can do for you, how do you do it? The best time to solarize is in July and August when days are long and hot. Solarizing your bed is very straightforward. Loosen the top one foot of your bed with a fork, digger, tiller, or your bare hands (probably want to avoid that last one). Late in the day, water the soil until it is soaking wet (much wetter than a regular watering of your garden). The next day, cover the bed with plastic. Use clear film that is three (3) to six (6) mils thick. Do not use black plastic. Black plastic will not work. Use clear film. Cover the edges of the film with soil and wait four (4) to six (6) weeks. If it rains during the period of waiting, sweep the water off the top of the plastic with a broom. Do not put holes in the plastic as this will let the heat escape.

After you are done solarizing, you can plant a late fall crop. Don’t disturb your soil much. While the weed seeds at the top have been offed, the ones six or more inches down may not all be dead. It looks like you can expect the effects of solarizing to last for four or so years as long as you practice good soil and garden management. Strike back the the disease and weeds in your organic vegetable garden, solarize your beds this year!

15 Steps for Disease Prevention in Your Garden

You have fewer tools for fighting diseases in your garden than for eliminating pests. You get a pest, you pick it off, hit it with insecticidal soap, go after it with natural elimination methods. With diseases, in many instances, your best bet is to to destroy the individual diseased plant. There are very few practical and effective methods to control of plant disease on an individual plant; however, removal of the diseased plant is effective control for your garden as an entirety.

Your first step in disease control is being able to recognize the disease and determine the identity of the pestilence. Always keep in mind that many fungal problems are not fatal and do not harm the production of the plant. Don’t panic at the first sight of yellow spots or a single yellow leaf on your plant. Look at the overall health of the plant. If it looks hearty and vigorous, let it sit for a spell. If your plant is withering and deteriorating very rapidly, you have a viral of bacterial pestilence and the plant should be destroyed.

In order to control disease in your garden, you must spend time with your garden. Look at your plants and notice changes in their appearance. Most problems with your plants will be caused by insects and not diseases. By doing research, paying attention, and gaining experience, you will learn the difference. Unfortunately, experience is another word for dying plants. I was listening to the radio the other day and the host of the garden show opined that you are not a gardener until you have killed a hundred plants. That is how you gain experience. So don’t worry, don’t be afraid, and start growing.

Unfortunately, not every disease has a unique set of symptoms. Many symptoms are causes by more than on plant plant disease. In any event, plant diseases can be divided into five broad categories: environmental, fungal, bacterial, viral, and nematode. The insidious diseases make things difficult for you because the symptoms that you see cannot be easily segregated by category. You will learn to distinguish between the diseases because some are more common than others and your experience from previous years will inform your response to the outbreak. You won’t get the necessary experience unless you get started. So while there is some overlap in the symptoms from the categories, don’t worry about it too much. Each type of pestilence mentioned above can be recognized by is symptom set.

If you are just getting started gardening, look to be beset by environmental diseases first. Those will be followed by fungal diseases. Bacterial, viral, and nematode disease are the least frequent visitors to your little plot of heaven.

Symptom identification is the most important step in combating plant disease in your garden. You have to recognize the symptom in order to diagnose and treat the problem. A common disease symptom that you should look for is yellowing of the leaves. Make sure that you observe which leaves are yellowing: all of them, just the young ones, leaf edges, between the veins of the leaf, old leaves only, irregular spots on the leaves, round spots on the leaves, dots, or mosaic patterns. Next check for brown areas on your leaves: the edges, the tips, brown spots on all leaves, brown sections on the leaves, or brown on the edge and in the middle. The other symptoms to look for are water soaked appearance, greasy appearance, plant mysteriously and unexpectedly up and dies, rotten leaves, rotten fruit, abnormal growth, wilting plant, and defoliation. In order to protect your plants from disease, you have to spend time with them. Get out in your garden and get your hands dirty.

While this article is too short to provide specific detail on on all diseases and their prevention and treatment, I can provide you with fifteen steps to help prevent disease in your garden plot. Remember that an ounce of prevention is a pound of cure. In order to have the healthiest garden possible, you should 1) build healthy soil, 2) use compost, 3)Plant disease resistant varieties of your plants, 4) Rotate your crops, 5) Use foliar spray, 6) Use Mulch, 7) Get rid of the transmission method, Water plants before noon, 9)Properly clean out your garden in the fall, 10) Sterilize your soil with solarization, 11) Use drip irrigation to prevent fungal infestation, 12) Keep your tools clean, 13) In order to avoid fungal disease spread, don’t work with your plants when they are wet, 14) Mow under your fruit trees and remove the clippings and fruit tree leaves to the compost pile, 15) Go outside, pay attention to your plants, garden, gain experience, and keep a garden journal!

If you have any tips, I’d love to hear from you!

5 Easy Steps to Help in Choosing and Caring For Your Plant

1. Choosing the right plant: You won’t have to spend as much time caring for your palnts if you choose plants that are suited to your environmental conditions and gardening style. Browse our collection of Gifts that Grow™, and get the perfect plant shipped to your door. 2. Watering: Test the soil in your containers every day with your finger. If it’s dry an inch below the surface – water. If you can’t water your plants on a regular basis, consider self-watering containers. If you’ve got hard-to-reach plants, we’d recommend a watering wand, which has saved us from lots of stepstool time. 3. Fertilizer: Fertilizer is important. Mix a dry, time-release fertilizer into the soil when planting, and use small amounts of liquid fertilizer for regular feeding every few weeks. 4. Fighting Pests: Inspect plants regularly for fungus, insects, bugs, etc. Remove any diseased or dying leaves. Spray insects with water or other natural repellants to get rid of them. 5. Pruning: Don’t be afraid to cut or trim plants to keep their shape and encourage growth – just leave at least 2/3 of the original plant intact so it’ll have enough surface area to absorb sunlight. Pinch deadhead faded flowers regularly to encourage more blooms on annual plants. A good set of tools can make all the difference. Keep in mind that every plant is different. Take some time to read up on your plants and learn as much as you can about their individual needs. A little time spent reading and planning now can save you a lot of time and disappointment later.

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