Garden Maintenance: Trap Plants

Allotment vegetable garden with marigolds / companion plants, onions, strawberry plants

 

It turns out that the subjects left to cover in this subsection break down into more than one blog. So here I will talk about Plants and Nematodes. 


As far as plants are concerned, you will find the right plants to use depending on what you are planting when you do your research. But there are a few plants that any garden could benefit from. The first three are known as Trap Plants. A trap plant attracts a pest away from the crop.


Nasturtiums- This, on top of its use of attracting little pear shaped insects called aphids away from your plants, is an incredibly useful food plant. Stems, leaves, seeds and flowers are edible. You may have eaten them in a salad before. They are a pretty orange color and have a peppery taste. 


One warning about using nasturtium plants. They attract aphids like crazy, so you can’t plant them too close to your crop plants. The aphids can jump to surrounding plants, but this is not significant. The real problem is with the ants. Ants are also attracted to nasturtiums too, for the aphids. And they spread the aphids around to other plants to make more food for themselves. They eat Aphid honeydew- Yes another euphemism for poop. But in this case it at least describes the sticky sweet liquid  that the aphids excrete. Leave it to ants to be the farmers of the insect world.


Oh and one of the reasons you have to handle aphids right away if they get to your crop plants is because this “honeydew” is food for terrible things like scales and the molds that will kill your plants faster than anything. That’s why it is good practice to visit your garden everyday and look around, including underneath the leaves. Any problem is easier to solve if you can nip it in the bud. (Pun intended ;).


Marigolds- Marigolds give many advantages. They attract beneficial pollinators and because of their strong smell they provide a natural pest control. The smell masks the scent of vegetables from pests. They also attract slugs and snails away from your plants. 


Marigolds are wonderful with the nightshades like tomatoes, eggplant, peppers and potatoes. There are over 50 varieties of marigold. The three most popular for garden use are Tagetes erecta, the African marigold, T patua, the French marigold and T tenuifolia, the Signet marigold.


You can plant these between your plants or make a border around them which should provide a scent barrier. 


If you plant them three to four weeks before planting tomatoes, when you put the tomatoes in the roots of both plants will form a symbiotic relationship that repels root knot nematodes. Nematodes are microscopic roundworms. There are many beneficial nematodes, (more on that later) but the root knot isn‘t one of them. They can obliterate your whole tomato crop.

close up of an Amaranth plant

Amaranth- I bet you didn’t know you could grow THIS in your backyard. I sure didn't! It is an excellent trap crop. It attracts cucumber beetles away from, well, cucumbers and melons and everything in the gourd family. These plants make a showy display and should be planted around the border of the garden.


Beware that when amaranth goes to seed it will drop a lot of seeds all over the ground which could be messy in the wrong place, BUT you will have amaranth every year in that spot. You can harvest the seeds by shaking them into an inverted umbrella. 


Amaranth leaves are edible as well as the seeds. 


Chrysanthemums- The flowers produce pyrethrum, which is a combination of about 6 forms of pyrethrin combined naturally.  This makes a long list of insects and spiders stay away. This includes Japanese Beetles, roaches, bed bugs, spider mites, silverfish and ticks. 


Pyrethrins are used to make pesticides because they are so effective. So chrysanthemums are not only good for the garden, but it is great to have indoors too. You might run across the word pyrethroids. These are chemical pesticide components that are designed after the natural pyrethrins because of their effectiveness.


Basil- This in my opinion is a must have in the garden. It repels thrips, which kind of looks like a monochrome bee or wasp under a magnifying glass. I say that because they are less than a millimeter long. Thrips eat the surfaces of leaves. Basil also repels flies and mosquitoes as well as milkweed bugs, hornworms and aphids. Basil can also lend its roots into the synergy that tomatoes have with marigolds to protect from nematodes. And face it, it is just darn delicious especially when combined with tomato.


But even if you don’t agree, you can let the basil flower go to seed and you will attract bees and birds and other beneficial insects that will love you for your basil.


Strong Smelling Plants


These often have repellant properties for many pests and some actually attract pests and mask the presence of the rest of your garden saving it from being munched up. These plants in the main are strong smelling herbs and also flowers. These are some examples, but the list is too many to list. You will know these plants because you will be able to smell them.  Here we have the familiar Rosemary, Basil, Mint, Oregano, Lemon Balm, etc, etc, etc. 


You probably noticed that some plants fall into more than one category.


Find out which ones are best for what you are growing when you do your research.


If something goes out of balance and the garden does develop any overload of “pests” one can make teas out of these scented plants and when cool put the tea in a spray bottle and spray it all over the plants. This can save your plants until nature restores the balance. This can also be used as a preventative method.


Warning: Be sure, if you spray, to spray in the early and late part of the day so that the liquid is absorbed before the hot part of the day or your plants could burn. This goes for any liquid you are going to spray on your plants.


A potent combination to use is Fermented nettle and garlic tea. Peel and crush about 3 to 5 heads/bulbs of garlic and let it sit for 10 min. This is important because you want the maximum amount of allicin for the mixture. 


Garlic contains alliin which is inactive unless the membranes in the garlic are disturbed. Imagine a bug trying to chomp on some garlic he might get one bite in, but by the second bite the enzyme alliinase would have converted innocent alliin to allicin and the bug would get burned either killing it or sending it running with a warning to not go near garlic!


This makes it safe for the garlic plant because too much allicin would burn the garlic plant as well. So a strong isolated reaction preserves the plant.


So when you crush the garlic you get the maximum alliinase release and then the maximum allicin. And waiting a bit gives time for all of the alliin to be converted.

Close up of nettle leaves

Then while you are waiting for the garlic you strip off the nettle leaves. It is best to use tender green parts of the plant. Nettle usually grows wild so you can go for a hike and just snip off the new green parts as you go along. You can google how to identify it until I write a blog on nettles. Be sure to take caution when harvesting and working with nettle. It does have a sting to it.


Put the crushed garlic and the nettle in a cheesecloth or muslin. Both are cotton cloths, but cheese cloth is more loosely woven and probably cheaper. Tie it up and put it in a plastic bucket or glass vat, make sure that whatever container you use is not metal. That will contaminate and weaken the solution.


Put a rock or weight on top of the cloth pouch to keep it submerged and fill the container up with chlorine free water. This is important because you are trying to culture bacteria and chlorine would just kill it. Then cover the container to prevent other microorganisms from falling in and to keep the smell contained. Let it sit for at least a week or two. When you are ready to use it, dilute it 50/50 with non chlorinated water and put it in a sprayer or spray bottle. 


Then you spray the leaves of your plants top and underside thoroughly. This will ensure rapid absorption of the smell. It takes a couple of days to fully absorb. If it rains before that you may have to apply it again.


Any solution you don’t eventually use can be diluted again by about half and used as a soil drench fertilizer. And the pulp remaining in the cheesecloth or muslin can of course be composted.


Beneficial Nematodes- I know this isn’t a plant, but they aren’t bugs either. You can’t see nematodes with the naked eye, but you would be spraying them on the ground and onto your plants where they would live and keep your plants protected. 


Nematodes are parasites on insects. They inject bacteria into them or their eggs to kill and help digest them. Then they eat and reproduce themselves. This is a blessing because once they get established you don’t have to do anything else. 


I have experience using nematodes targeted to fleas and their eggs and it was a wonderful relief until I moved and had to do it again in a new place.


You can get nematodes online. They can be expensive and you have to follow the exact directions, but if you are having a real problem, it would turn out to be worth the trouble.


I hope you are getting the idea that growing your own food is possible and real. The world will change if more people become food sovereign, not depending on commercial businesses to feed their families. After all, large commercial companies do not have a great track record of putting our health first, do they?


We at Herbal Roots are very interested in safeguarding your health.



*This article is intended for informational purposes. The statements above have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
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