Organic Pest Control: Prevention, Intervention and Attitude Adjustment

 

 

 

 

Here is some information about organic pest control.  As usual, gardens and people need a lot of the same kind of care and attention.

The main lesson for today's blog post about organic pest control is that there is never a single, easy answer for coping with problems.  It takes clear thinking, effort, patience, persistence, and a positive attitude to overcome challenges.

As with all organic gardening, the philosophy behind organic pest control is not forcing anything to happen, but to help create the right circumstances for living things to do what they do naturally.  There are many ways to combat pests in the garden, and they fall under a few main categories: prevention, intervention, and adjusting expectations.  

Prevention:

Plants naturally resist attack by pests and diseases, but they need to have the strength and the energy to do that.  A plant that is struggling to get enough light, water, or nutrients will be more vulnerable to pests and diseases than a plant that has everything it needs to be strong and healthy.  The best way to support your plants' health is by maintaining a healthy garden environment.

Try to keep pests and diseases out of your garden by acquiring seeds, seedlings, and soil amendments from reputable sources.  Three summers ago, most of the northeast was plagued by a tomato disease called "late blight" that was ultimately traced back to a Home Depot warehouse.  Because they are such a large distributor, the disease spread without control.  Growing your own seedlings, or getting them from a trusted organic source can prevent pests and diseases from entering your garden.

Maintain biodiversity in the garden. Grow a variety of crops so that your garden doesn't become a beacon to one particular type of pest.  Pests and diseases are typically specialized to a particular family of plants.  By growing many different types of plants, you will be less likely to attract a large number of a particular type of pest.  Also, bugs eat other bugs.  Spiders, dragonflies, ladybugs and other predators in your garden will control populations of plant-eating pests.  Growing different types of plants will attract different types of predators.  Chemical pesticides kill ALL types of bugs, including the good ones!  Never use chemicals in your garden!

Space out different plants in the same family and separate them with other types of plants.  That way, if you get pests on your squash plants on one side of the garden, they may not get to the plants on the other side of the garden because there are other, unappealing plants in the way.

Plant "unpleasant" plants around your tasty ones to ward off hungry bugs.  Marigolds and onions can help protect tomatoes and peppers, for example.

Intervention:

When you do find pests on your plants, you want to remove them without destroying the balance of biodiversity in your garden or applying dangerous chemicals.  A simple application of soapy water to the leaves can dramatically reduce an aphid infestation, for example.  There are organic products available, too, such as neem oil.

Removing by hand works for big pests, such as potato beetles and tomato horn worms.  

You can also order live ladybugs and other predators from special organic garden supply companies to release into your garden if you don't have any naturally.

Attitude adjustment:

Organic veggies from your garden will not look as cosmetically perfect as the uniform grocery store produce.  It may have blemishes or irregularities, but that doesn't make it bad to eat.  In fact, it is much better for you than chemically- or genetically-enhanced produce!  So don't worry if you share a little bit of your harvest with the local micro-fauna.  Bugs need to eat too, right?  Don't aim for perfect.  It's much healthier do do the best you can and not worry too much about what you can't control.

Nina Rogowsky, Garden Facilitator

Health Waltham

nrogowsky@healthy-waltham.org

 

 

Nina Rogowsky, our guest writer,  became involved with Healthy Waltham through a community service work day planting gardens with residents at Prospect Hill Terrace.  Initially hired as an intern, Nina was able to expand her role as the Garden Facilitator through a grant from the American Heart Association supporting school gardens as a means to increase students’ fruit and vegetable consumption and promote physical activity.  She now oversees Healthy Waltham’s many gardens and helps coordinate gardening activities with the community.  Nina graduated from Brandeis University in 2008 with Bachelor’s degrees in English and Fine Arts.