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I prefer organic gardening, but I admit that I was very tempted to blast those green worms that attacked my tomatoes and pepper plants with everything that Monsanto had to offer! I dispersed beneficial nematodes and they were a flop! I have Seven and Neem Oil but I could not find any information as to which would help me, if either! I am really looking forward to this forum and hoping to learn lots from the experience and wisdom of others!
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Here’s my take on organic gardening. It’s nice when it works but if you actually want food to harvest and eat use what works. Most of my garden feeds the deer anyway, and they don’t seem to mind.
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I have heard, that a mix of salt and vinegar in a spray bottle works on most pests.
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AnonymousI threw those suckers in the ditch! A bird at a few, well gutted is more accurate, eeewwwww. The only thing I used to spray my plants is a mixture of neem oil, Dawn and water. My husband was all for using rubbing alcohol and possibly a blow torch at the rate I was pitching my multiple hissy fits LOL.
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Children? I was raised a farm gal and remember being sent to the garden to hand-pick those green horn worms. If one puts a bounty paid per worm, it provides motivation. If you have chickens…they will gladly turn those greenies into bright yolk eggs. But don’t have chickens actually pick them off the plants. Chickens love to peck one or two great holes in tomatoes…..every… tomato. <frown>
Same for the bugs that hide under the leaves of many plants. Hand-picking seems to be the only thing that worked for me. {excuse my brain: can’t bring to mind the particular pest I’m referring to..}
OldMtWoman -
Yeah agreeing with OldMt. Woman-gotta pick those tomato hornworms off by hand and squish them or feed them to the chickens and ducks. We just got a weird infestation on our pole beans of a leafroller caterpillar. I tried the all natural spray and while it worked great on aphids it didn’t touch these caterpillars so we all trooped out and squished leafroller caterpillars…so far it has saved the patch!
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Diatomaceous Earth! ’round here it’s really inexpensive, about $1/lb I think. Apply it daily (use common sense, wear a mask) until those damn evil green monsters (‘mater worms) are under control. It’ll rid your problem in a fraction of the time it takes to pick and it won’t affect your harvest. Learned that from our old-timey neighbor and we’ve had excellent results. We did the same thing as others before that…pickin’ them all the time, trying to feed them to our chicken/ducks, but they rarely showed interest let alone eat ’em. Actually D’earth works really well for a lot of pests, but not those f’in squash bugs, I know that.
Any advice on non-monsanto solutions to squash bugs?
We’re “all natural” farming ourselves, in fact we make part of our living from it. I say all natural, I mean organic, but at the end of the day we’ll do what we gotta do to keep our produce healthy. I’m with #74s’ comment on that front. But so far, so good, we’ve not had to resort to any of the poisons yet….knock on wood.
Another tip if interested; We’ve had great success with the baking soda/veggie oil/dish soap mix sprayed on our ‘maters and cukes for controlling blight. Plenty of info on the web/you tube if so inclined…
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dimu borgir-squash bugs are horrible…you can wrap the bases of summer or winter squash plants with tin foil so the bugs can’t bore into the vine and have seen mixed results with that. You can also look for the ‘sawdust sign’ and if you catch the borer soon enough you can twist wire up into the plant stem and kill the bug that way. Lot of work when you grow dozens of plants, though! I have used diatomaceous earth and it seems to help some with them.
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AD – Never heard of the tin foil. Thanks. I’ll try that one, almost anything beats picking them. We do grow several but count on a 50% loss out of the gate. Then hopefully the rest will last ’till the end of the season. Haven’t had much luck with D’earth on these bugs either. We’ve not used any poisons yet on anything and won’t on squash because they’re not that important for us…yet.
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One tip is that if you have a problem with bugs or fungus, do NOT compost those plants in the same compost you intend to use the following year. Start a second pile, being sure that it gets good and hot as it decomposes (160 degrees or more, if I remember) to kill all the eggs.
If your problem is with contaminated/infested soil, plant a different crop there next year and grow the original plants someplace else.
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Great point about the compost and crop rotation!
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Vinegar will kill about any bug but if sprayed on plants it may kill them too.
Healthy soil is the key to a good garden. If you have worms in your garden soil it is an indicator of the health of the soil. No worms equal poor soil. D’earth and Epsom ssalts is are excellent products for the garden but soil health is key. -
I’ve been told that lime works on a host of vermin.
2 years ago the Japanese beetles got so bad I was worried I would lose my blackberry canes. blackberrys are petty indestructable, but the beetles had striupped almost all the leaves. I went oput late one Friday evening, just before sunset and hosed them, and all my fruit trees which were also affected, down with a weak maathion solution, about 2/3 normal strength. the next morning, my serious infestation was down to a few nuisance stragglers.
don’t like going to extreames like that, but hate losing crops and expensive permaculture canes and trees. they take a while to establish, so I get a little protective of them.
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