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Show 4 - DUBIOUS TIMES - AUGUST 15, 1998 GARDEN GRAB BAG bynuswsmn Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs.......Well, if you’ve got them you know exactly what I’m talking about. It seems like they’re everywhere! I was so amazed when we first started gardening here because I had virtually no bugs of any type and I thought the climate had a lot to do with it. Actually I just hadn’t added my name to the bug hotline which lets them know where all the tender tasty garden treats are located around their neighborhood. A couple of years of gardening and they found me and passed on the word to all their friends and relatives so that I wouldn’t feel likeI wasn’t well thought of in the bug community! And this is just phase two of the battle which started when the deer, bunnies, raccoons, and various other creatures discovered that dinner was served. The first thing to consider is the actual numbers of things that fly, crawl, wiggle, and squirm around, in, and among your plants. Numbers of total insects and other companion plantings which act by attracting rather than deterring the harmful insects from the general area( wouldn’t you rather they ate some extra nastur1iums that you’ve offered to them than your tomato plants?) the total population is harmful to your plants. It’s this other removing the pest or its favorite hiding place, establishing physical barriers such as collars to discourage cutworms, causing it is important. One of the best tactics to take when you notice a pest infestation is to observe, observe, and observe even more before doing anything and not to make assumptions since injury caused by one insect may look the same as that caused by another. However, we should also remember that damage will always be present to some degree, determine what extent is natural, and remember that we don’t want to totally remove all pests because we need some just to sustain the population of predators and parasites! We should consider using more of an integrated pest management philosophy which is defined as a “decision-making strategy which combines all possible strategies with the aim of suppressing the population of a pest below the level where it .. Food supply is easier to work with because this would include such strategies as planting resistant varieties of your crop, crop rotation, or the use of row covers to deprive them of their munchies. Aphids are very sensitive to nitrogen levels and may increase with over-fertilization. The food supply category would also include some types of critters tells you nothing about any actual damage being done because it has been estimated that only about 10% of 90% (which are often harmless and may even be beneficial in the general scheme of things) which get killed indiscrim— inately if pesticides are randomly used. This is why actual identification of a particular problem and the particular insect A. -_..__.._____..~-_‘~-A_ ....._-__. but we can decrease the damage done to our plants by too hot and too dry conditions and make them less vulnerable to infestation. Additionally, thrips increase with dryness levels in plants. We can also mimic certain conditions . For instance, although drip irrigation has many advantages, overhead watering or at least an occasional walk-through with your friendly hose and sprayer can dislodge many insects rapidly. causes economic or aesthetic damage”. The first thing to determine is whether the infestation actually indicates a more serious problem in the garden since plants stressed by deficiencies of water, soil quality, or available nutrients are more likely to be infected. We’re back to compost again...by increasing the diversity of the soil surface we have healthier plants and increase the habitat for beneficial insects. These points should be addressed before going any further. A great statement I read concerning this issue was that if your oil indicator light kept coming on in your car, you wouldn’t just remove the bulb, would you? But if you’re feeling fairly confident about the garden’s general health, we can start to consider the ways insects are kept in control. I’m going to discuss basically “natural controls” since we, unforumately, are less familiar with them than the average bottle of pesticide. These include such things as weather, food supply (large monoculture farms will automatically have more problems than your small home garden), habitat, and biological controls which include natural predators and parasites. And we am manipulate these factors to some degree and help re— establish the balance. Weather is probably the hardest for us to “change” Habitat is something we can handle by physically using various types of traps such as the sticky kinds, using diatomaceous earth, ashes, or other physical deterrents to various pests. Companion plantings which discourage infestation also may be used to change the habitat of the pest. Biological controls include predators which consider our pests as their dinner and parasites which use the pest in some way, such as laying their eggs on them and killing them in the process. Such predators may be attracted by planting flowers in the vegetable garden such as mint, members of the daisy family, yarrow, or dill. They can also be purchased and released but this has several drawbacks. Most, such as ladybugs, tend to fly off (where’s their loyalty?) but green lacewings are often recommended. Also Bacillus thuringiensis may be introduced but this, unfortunately, is not species-specific and kills not only cabbage loopers but larva of all moths and butterflies. Parasitic controls are very host-specific and these can generally only be encouraged to hang around your neighborhood. As you can imagine, pesticides are very hard on these beneficial bugs. There are generally fewer of them to begin with, they often take longer to reproduce themselves. and they move around more looking for other bugs to graze on which exposes them to more treated surfaces. They concentrate the pesticide by ingesting pesticide-treated insects, and they may even be more sensitive to certain pesticides. Sevin, for example, is more toxic to bees and other Hymenoptera than most pest populations since many of them have developed resistances! As a last resort, there are many recipes for homebrewed repellents which could also be tried before reaching for that pesticide bottle. These include onion top-anddetergent combinations, garlic sprays, soap and cooking oil mixes, hot pepper sprays, etc. The varieties are as endless as the number of bugs we can talk about and the ways to make them are found in many books and articles. I know this has been a long article but it’s a BIG subject and hopefully we’ve come up with a few ways to control bug problems without sterilizing our entire environment. Till next time..... |
