Let's talk about bugs

I no longer have an organic garden and it wasn't my choice. The county decided to spray for mosquitoes with a crop duster and my garden was in the way. I was livid! Not only was my garden sprayed with something called, Evergreen 60-6 but things that my bees would be visiting in a few hours were too.

  

Now, “Evergreen 60-6,” doesn’t that just sound bad?? Doesn’t it sound like this would be a great title for a documentary about some carcinogen that’s making people grow a third eye and a tail?

It happened. I’m told they made about five passes over my parents’ property. I guess I can announce that we’re mosquito free! I think it’s really wrong of them to spray God knows what without educating us on what they are spraying. I only found out because it was reported on the news and all that they said was that the pesticide was safe in the dosage that was being sprayed. How do I know they calibrated their sprayer correctly or it was diluted carefully? And now my garden that I’ve worked so hard to keep organic and raised seedlings from only organic seed is tainted. I know it’s not the end of the world but I’m really big on principle and justice and I feel wronged. I’m calling the Ag Commissioner because I feel like being one of those people right now.

OK I’m off my soapbox now. So let’s pretend I still have an organic garden. I’m really big on using nature to work for us and one of the best tools us gardeners have are bugs. But you need to remember that some of our worst enemies are bugs. And then there are insects that are just plain pesky and don’t bother anyone or anything but you. How can we use this knowledge to our advantage? I’ll tell you here in this post.

  

First what you’ll need to do is spend some time in your garden identifying the insects that you see. This will take some patience and maybe a flashlight. Remember, many insects are only busy at night - I suppose they are sleeping or hiding during the day. The bugs that I have in my garden will most certainly be different than the ones that you have (especially for those of you that are in different states). One of my friends’ lives only about 20 miles from my garden and even she has some different critters.

If I were you, I would go out at different times of day with a notebook, a digital camera and observe. Right down the names of the bugs that you know and note which plants you’ve seen them on. Take pictures of the ones that you don’t recognize and search around online to identify them. Entomology is not my forte so I don’t think I’ll be much help.

  

The reason I’ve asked you take these steps first is so that you that you know your garden’s “culture.” You will never be able to do the work of a beneficial creature with your spray bottle so you want to make sure you won’t do anything to harm your helpers.

Let’s identify your biggest helpers:

• Predatory Wasps – Eat eggs of many harmful insects and even flies. Some of them suck the juice out of aphids and then lay their eggs inside of their dried out bodies. This is good! They also pollinate.
• Fly Parasites – They lay eggs in the fly’s pupae and then they hatch and come out of the pupae like Alien!
• Lacewings – Both the larvae and adults munch on the eggs, larvae and adults of various bugs. They are one of the best things to see in your garden. They are also called “Aphid Lions.”
• Ladybugs – This one is very well known for eating aphids and they’re cute too. 
• Frogs – Keep as many of these guys around. I read that you can create little cubbies for them around your garden but I’ve placed an old board in my garden and they seem to hang out there just fine during the hottest part of the day. In the mornings and at night they are everywhere and I know they are eating plenty of nasties for me.
• Praying Mantis – They eat anyone in their way.
• Birds – They eat good and bad things but I just like having them around.
• Bats – Yes, you can put up a bat house to try to get some in your yard but if you ever see bats at night, you should be grateful. I’ve heard that a few blocks from my apartment, there are swarms of bats that fly out between two buildings every night. I think I want to go witness this one of these nights.  
• Various ground beetles – These eat some insects and slugs but you need to be sure you identify them as “meat-eaters” rather than vegetarians.
• Ants – They are both good and bad. They help to pollinate but they are also stanch protectors of some bad insects like aphids. If you see a lot of ants in your garden, I would get rid of them.

The bad ones: Aphids are probably the most common but luckily a lot of things like to eat them. Did you know that aphids are born pregnant? That’s probably why they are so prolific. Grasshoppers have quite an appetite so they can be pretty destructive in a garden. Leafhoppers suck out the juice from your plants making the leaves turn brown. Other nasties are earwigs, cutworms, flea beetles, potato beetles, slugs, spider mites, and some types of maggots and caterpillars are damaging insects.

  

So if you have a nice balance of good and bad insects, you probably won’t have much of a problem in your garden. If your pendulum is swinging more towards the bad side, you may need to either release some purchased lacewings, ladybugs or praying mantis’ or, you can make up a little spray bottle of some DYI killing concoctions. Here are a few sprays that you can make at home:

  

Baking Soda Spray: Targets aphids, spider mites and white flies. Mix 1 teaspoon of baking soda to 1/3 cup olive oil. Take 2 teaspoons of this mixture and add it to a cup of water in a spray bottle. Spray your affected plants once a day for a week.

  

The Triple S (Simple Soap Spray): This useful in taking out a wide variety of garden pests, including aphids, scale, mites and thrips. Add one tablespoon of dishwashing soap (you can use an organic soap) to a gallon of water and spray the mixture on the pests. The soap dissolves the outer coating or shell of the insects, eventually killing them.

Powdery Mildew Baking Soda Spray: A tried-and-true method for preventing powdery mildew. It needs to be applied weekly. Simply combine one tablespoon of baking soda, one tablespoon of vegetable oil, one tablespoon of dish soap and one gallon of water and spray it on the foliage of susceptible plants. The baking soda disrupts fungal spores, preventing them from germinating. The oil and soap help the mixture stick to plant leaves.

Hot Pepper Spray: mites. Simply mix two tablespoons of hot pepper sauce, a few drops of biodegradable dish soap, and one quart of water and let it sit overnight. Use a spray bottle to apply the spray to infested plants. Hot pepper spray works because the compound capsaicin, which causes the "heat" in hot peppers, is just as irritating to insects as it is to us. This mixture also helps repel whiteflies, but it may have to be reapplied if you start to see the mites or whiteflies returning. ***Disclaimer!! Make sure you use a pepper sauce that does NOT have vinegar in it. I’ve used Tabasco sauce before and it killed my plants. I suppose this is a good moment to tell you that vinegar spray is a great thing to kill weeds with.***



Happy bug hunting and concoction making!

Daphne