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habitat_gardener · October 28, 2009

"What plant extracts were useful in disease or insect control?
Getting definitive information from this site is like pulling hens teeth! Very hard work and never easy."

What diseases? What insects? What crops? What conditions? You have to ask very specific questions if you want very specific answers.

*Definitive* does not apply to organic gardening, in my experience. Every year has different challenges -- heat waves in Feb., cold snaps in April, etc. Even looking at tomato varieties I've grown a few years, they're amazing some years and duds other years. So I try a whole bunch of different strategies, a few new things each year, and see what works each time. I make at least 300 gal. of compost a year and use it liberally, and over time my garden seems to have fewer problems that need intervention.

So much depends on timing -- I've found I can avoid having any cucumber beetles and squash bugs in my community garden plot if I plant cucurbits later than I want to (to avoid the first hatching), and if I choose varieties carefully. Some varieties are pest magnets. But this year I had hardly any cucumbers, maybe because we never got the heat waves that came every month last year.

I heard Michael Pollan on the radio the other day mention that crop rotation is a powerful tool in monocultures. Plant potatoes one year and wheat the next, and the Colorado potato beetles emerge in a wheat field and say, what's this? Planting a different rice variety every 10 rows in a rice monoculture makes a difference. He also mentioned that for a conventional farmer, an explosion of a plant-eating bug means lots of spraying. For an organic farmer, it means that the bug-eating bugs will have lots to eat, all you need do is wait for them to arrive. (I've found that approach almost always works for aphids.)

The main disease prob in the comm. garden is rust on raspberries. So many gardeners neglect their raspberry patches that no matter what I do, the rust will blow in from all directions. I've tried teas made from comfrey, cornmeal, borage, etc. This year I read that extra PK and straw mulch can help. So I added greensand and phosphate rock and, fortuitously, there were bales of free straw available last week.

The only "pests" I do anything at all to foil are birds and snails/slugs. For birds, I use netting and cloches to protect seedlings from Sept. to May, and all summer on the blackberries. I also learned there's no stage at which peas are safe from birds in my garden, so they're always under cover. Birds also like to dig in new compost, so I put down the compost a week or so before I plant to prevent new seedlings from being uprooted. For snails and slugs, I use iron phosphate-based bait such as Sluggo in my cold frames (they love tiny pepper and tomato seedlings, I learned this spring). I rarely need to use it otherwise. Oh, and this time of year the squirrels are busy squirreling away nuts in my garden, so I protect all new plantings with hardware cloth and other squirrelproof strategies. This year they've especially enjoyed digging holes near the bean roots, so I had to start protecting them a couple months ago.

October 28, 2009	#6
habitat_gardener Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: California Central Valley Posts: 2,540	"What plant extracts were useful in disease or insect control? Getting definitive information from this site is like pulling hens teeth! Very hard work and never easy." What diseases? What insects? What crops? What conditions? You have to ask very specific questions if you want very specific answers. Definitive does not apply to organic gardening, in my experience. Every year has different challenges -- heat waves in Feb., cold snaps in April, etc. Even looking at tomato varieties I've grown a few years, they're amazing some years and duds other years. So I try a whole bunch of different strategies, a few new things each year, and see what works each time. I make at least 300 gal. of compost a year and use it liberally, and over time my garden seems to have fewer problems that need intervention. So much depends on timing -- I've found I can avoid having any cucumber beetles and squash bugs in my community garden plot if I plant cucurbits later than I want to (to avoid the first hatching), and if I choose varieties carefully. Some varieties are pest magnets. But this year I had hardly any cucumbers, maybe because we never got the heat waves that came every month last year. I heard Michael Pollan on the radio the other day mention that crop rotation is a powerful tool in monocultures. Plant potatoes one year and wheat the next, and the Colorado potato beetles emerge in a wheat field and say, what's this? Planting a different rice variety every 10 rows in a rice monoculture makes a difference. He also mentioned that for a conventional farmer, an explosion of a plant-eating bug means lots of spraying. For an organic farmer, it means that the bug-eating bugs will have lots to eat, all you need do is wait for them to arrive. (I've found that approach almost always works for aphids.) The main disease prob in the comm. garden is rust on raspberries. So many gardeners neglect their raspberry patches that no matter what I do, the rust will blow in from all directions. I've tried teas made from comfrey, cornmeal, borage, etc. This year I read that extra PK and straw mulch can help. So I added greensand and phosphate rock and, fortuitously, there were bales of free straw available last week. The only "pests" I do anything at all to foil are birds and snails/slugs. For birds, I use netting and cloches to protect seedlings from Sept. to May, and all summer on the blackberries. I also learned there's no stage at which peas are safe from birds in my garden, so they're always under cover. Birds also like to dig in new compost, so I put down the compost a week or so before I plant to prevent new seedlings from being uprooted. For snails and slugs, I use iron phosphate-based bait such as Sluggo in my cold frames (they love tiny pepper and tomato seedlings, I learned this spring). I rarely need to use it otherwise. Oh, and this time of year the squirrels are busy squirreling away nuts in my garden, so I protect all new plantings with hardware cloth and other squirrelproof strategies. This year they've especially enjoyed digging holes near the bean roots, so I had to start protecting them a couple months ago.