Garden Maintenance: Insects and Pests

Part 1

I always thought of this subject as pest control, meaning killing pests, but when you are trying to create a whole ecosystem that will eventually practically take care of itself there is a balance you are looking for, not elimination of anything. 

I also thought that pesticides that are non-toxic to people were part of organic gardening and sometimes necessary. Well Nature gets by wonderfully without industrial chemicals of any kind. It makes its own chemicals and the only trouble ever caused is when something is reduced or introduced with no regard to how it affects the whole and it imbalances things and then there is an overload of something which we would then call a “pest”.

Nature is always trying to keep itself in balance it seems, just like the body. When the body does it, it’s called homeostasis. In nature we just call it “The Balance of Nature”. It is all about balance.

Using chemical pesticides can actually kill off beneficial insects that are trying to help the pest situation, like ladybugs. It can throw off the balance of the whole environment because those insects are food for other creatures. Plus pesticide poison tends to work its way up the food chain. And if birds start dying you are in trouble because they eat a lot of insects and other things and insects as well as slugs and caterpillars, etc. would then really get out of hand. It is amazing how much birds eat.

Even in agriculture they are catching on that the use of pesticides is expensive and inefficient and not appreciated by neighbors or consumers who are becoming more aware of the poisoning of their food in general.

Wise agriculturalists now buy beneficial insects that feed on the insects that damage crops. And so they don’t have to keep outlaying large amounts of money on pest control every season. And they use plants that attract good insects, protect the crops by repelling bad insects, attract insects away from the crop and/or camouflage the smell of the crops so they don’t attract insects that will eat them. 

I say good and bad insects only regarding the health of the crop because there isn’t any other way I have found to say it, but all the bugs are necessary to the balance of nature.

Most of the time it is not necessary to purchase insects for your garden if you have the right plants. Birds usually take care of excessive insects. But you have to observe the garden to see what is there and how it is affecting your plants.

The challenge on this subject is to give information that is applicable to all different parts of the country because everywhere is slightly different. To get the skinny tailored to your own local environment the extension office for your area is the place to go.

Before you buy any new species of plant or insect, you want to make sure that it is right for your area. The last thing you want is an out of place bug or plant that will harm the balance in your whole area because it is not naturally from there and maybe the thing that keeps it in check is absent and then it itself becomes a pest instead of what you bought it for. 

I have seen this happen in Florida when I was there. The extension office was battling Brazilian Pepper and Asparagus Ferns that were choking off and killing whole forest areas. I had an asparagus fern in a hanging basket in NJ and it was sometimes hard to keep alive there, but in Florida? Wow did that plant thrive and there was nothing to stop it and it choked off all the other plants. 

I made the mistake of saying “What a nice asparagus fern! It looks so healthy!” when I first moved there and was looking at one planted in someone's landscape. I didn’t even know the concept of pest plants existing and I was sure surprised when the blood pressure of my companions shot out the top and I caused quite a row saying such a thing! 

They said that birds ate those berries and then pooped them in the forest and now look! And they showed me pictures of this plant just taking over and growing over the top of other plants and choking them off from sun and water. I was shocked. 

So it is important to find out about your local area before introducing new plants and insects into it.

Good gardening is based on good observation and recording that observation in the notebook or journal that you started the whole gardening endeavor with. Sometimes you just have to experiment and see how a plant or insect affects things. That’s basically how all the information which is called companion planting was obtained. 

It wasn‘t always a list in a book that you can just look up. But then again, you can look it up now, but don’t stop observing the results in your garden. You can always learn new things to better your results. You are the only one that has those exact conditions to work with.

The way you find which plants to use is to make a section in your notebook where you write the plants you want to grow in one column and you look up all the pests that could harm them in the next column and then the repelling plants and the next column for Notes where you add your observations or other pertinent things.

For instance:

Plant: Tomato

Pests: Aphids, budworm, cutworms, looper caterpillars, two spotted or red spider mite, root-knot nematodes, thrips, tomato russet mite or tomato mite

Repelling Plants: Marigold, geraniums, mint, thyme, dill, basil, rosemary, cosmos

Notes: Birds will take care of the insects that the companion plants can’t repel.

This might seem like a lot of work, but you only have to do it once and then your journal will be the reference for future years.

In Part 2, I will go into useful plants in general, useful insects found in most places as well as some other useful information on the subject.

For now, since the concepts I have just told you about are radically different than your concept of pest control may have been, I want you to observe your garden or the space you will put your garden in and notice what bugs, birds and other creatures are already there naturally. This will make Part 2 more useful to you. 

At Herbal Roots we hope you found this pleasantly interesting and potentially useful.