Every time I curse the insects that are eating holes in my budding eggplants and cucumbers, I remember this saying that a garden with no insects indicates that you are tending to a “dead zone.”
Over the past few years, I have come to accept (not embrace) that understanding and identifying insects is part of my gardening regimen, right up there with watering, fertilizing, and harvesting. I have devoted more time and resources to the subject.
My little 80 square foot community veggie plot is my test bed. After the spring peas are gone, I am left with several cucumbers, three tomato plants and five oriental eggplants. With the help of Sally Morgan’s The Healthy Vegetable Garden: A Natural, Chemical Free Approach to Soil, Biodiversity and Managing Pets and Diseases. I have implemented several strategies:
Strategy 1 – Place sacrificial plants to attract the pests that would normally attack your favorites. In my case, I plant radishes for the sole purpose of protecting my eggplants which are susceptible to bugs early in their life cycle. Nothing against radishes, but I much prefer eggplants.
Strategy 2 – Plant flowers that distract harmful insects away from your favorites, especially those vulnerable tomatoes. Last year I planted marigolds (they must be the Tagetes patula variety), to protect tomatoes. This year I added nasturtiums which have gone gangbusters in the plot (they failed miserable everywhere else.) According to Morgan, nasturtiums attract aphids, blackflies, flea beetles, cucumber beetles, and white butterflies.
Strategy 3 – Plant things that attract parasitic insects that attack and eat harmful insects. This year I lucked out because by coincidence I put some dill and cilantro in the veggie garden, which I later found out they attract parasitic wasps and lacewings. These parasitic insects lay eggs into a harmful insect and then like a scene out of the movie Alien, the eggs hatch and they eat the host insect from the inside.
Strategy 4 – Beware what lies under the soil. Many of the insects or critters that harm your faves live underneath the soil. Certain nematodes cause tomato wilt, but the root systems of the aforementioned marigold can help combat this. In his book, Epic Tomatoes Craig LeHoullier recommends wrapping a collar aluminum foil at the base of a tomato plant like a tomato to keep cutworms from eating through the stem at the soil line.
Caveats. I have mentioned my sources, but don’t take my word entirely for it, but there is value in having a reference book or two in your gardening library. (This is the bookseller me talking.) BTW, our next scheduled popup is at the Carter Center’s Freedom Farmers Market on Saturday morning May 20th.)
From Clockwise: Sacrificial radishes protecting eggplants; Keeping lettuce and basil on the deck instead of garden; Nasturtiums protecting tomatoes (in blue cage). The tennis ball marks the fence posts for my safety. Last year, predatory paper wasps set up home there.