Pest Control

One of the questions that comes up most often is how to deal with pests. Aphids, for example.

If you get your soil right, you’ve got a good chance of avoiding them altogether. Plants have their own defence systems, and with the right nutrition, just like humans they can fend off a good proportion of threats. Aphids (and mites and lots of other pests) like sappy, fast-growing, tender green shoots with thin cell walls and high sugar content, which is what you tend to get with too much nitrogen and not enough potassium or micronutrients. Avoiding soluble fertilizers or too much animal manure, and using compost made with a good variety of ingredients, and the occasional boost with seaweed brew, makes plants much less attractive to sap suckers or leaf eaters.

But some seasons, you don’t get it right or it’s not enough and your beautiful broccolini, just about ready to harvest, gets infested.

Conventional gardeners hunt the little beasts with some very toxic chemicals.  The smart ones are bundled up in spacesuits, the ones whose genes are being naturally selected for elimination are in thongs and t-shirts. It’s not very comfortable, ethical or fun, but it’s fast, effective, and if the brew used is nasty enough, it lasts for several weeks. 

Organic gardeners meticulously wash the little creatures off their plants with soapy water.  They get vegetables that don’t light up in the dark, but it’s slow, tedious, and just about a full-time job. It’s what gets food gardening a bad reputation for taking more than it gives.

Permaculturists count their lucky stars and build a pond quickly while the opportunity lasts. They may have to write off some of this spring’s crop as bait.  But by summer they’ll be sitting on the verandah with a beer, listening to a frog with a belly full of aphids inviting another frog to make the next  generation of aphid hunters. Aphids are juicy, high protein, slow, and prolific.  For a hungry frog in an amorous mood they are just about the best attractant you can get.

So, you have the first essential already – bait to attract pest predators. How do you capitalise on the opportunity?

Second essential, you avoid killing off the potential parents of your pest control troops by never using “icides” of any kind in the garden. Aphids, like many pests, are well adapted to this kind of warfare.  Their population will recover from a pesticide attack much more quickly than the population of their natural predators. Because their skins are so permeable, frogs are one of the most susceptible species of all. Even soap, detergent, or the surfactant in some organic pesticides will kill them.  Beware of killing your allies with friendly fire.

Thirdly, you provide them with the other essentials they need to breed up.  For frogs, it’s a pond (even a tiny one). For other pest predators – lizards, birds, dragonflies, predatory mites – there’s a whole range of simple strategies to make a garden an attractive home to them – hiding spots, perching spots, nesting spots, accessible water, nectar sources, warm and cool places to hang out. Often a very small intervention will make a big difference – one or two dill plants flowering, a shallow dish of water with a rock in it, a few bushy perennials.

You are not a very effective insect hunter.  You are big, clumsy, noisy, and slow.  Your eyesight is not good enough, your tongue is not long enough, and your brain gets bored so easily that it is a handicap.  There are other creatures that are much better adapted for the job.  Doing some enterprise bargaining with them is one of the best bits of garden work you can do.

So, this is an archive of posts about pest control in my garden. I hope it will give you some ideas and strategies. I’d love to hear your ideas.