A garden reading list

A great joy of northern gardening is the off-season. While the cold winds blow and the last of the leftover turkey simmers in the soup on the stove it's a great time to do a little reading. The following list of a few good new, old, and revised gardening classics should be a great start.

Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers by Ron L. Engeland.

Filaree Productions, 1995.

Considered a classic and must-have for anyone growing garlic, Engeland offers detailed information on more than 200 varieties of garlic along with instructions on how to go about growing a terrific harvest.

The Compleat Squash: A Passionate Grower's Guide to Pumpkins, Squashes, and Gourds by Amy Goldman.

Artisan, 2004.

The second of Goldman's three books on gardening and heirloom varieties, The Compleat Squash is a must-read for anyone wanting to meet other members of the Cucurbita family. Recipes, growing information, and other fascinating tidbits about these New World vegetables abound in this beautiful and informative book.

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener (Revised Edition) by Eliot Coleman.

Chelsea Green, 1995.

Another definitive work from the author who brought us the Four Season Harvest and The Winter Harvest Handbook, Coleman in this revised edition of offers even more detailed instruction and advice for those growing organically in smaller spaces.

The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals edited by Barbara Ellis and Fern Marshall Bradley.

Rodale Press, 1996.

Pests and disease can visit any garden and wreak a bit of havoc. This book, edited by two extremely experienced, knowledgeable, and engaging gardeners and garden writers, offers time-tested solutions for maintaining an organic garden while identifying and managing a few troublemakers.

Part Two on Pests

As mentioned earlier, pests are inevitable in any garden. For organic gardeners, there are a few good tricks of the trade.

Get to know the bugs in the garden, too. While some bugs see the garden as a buffet created for their enjoyment and nutrition others are helpful and considerably less destructive. (Check out this nifty page of photos from a UK gardener. Some are different, some the same, but it's well done.)

Other simple ideas to ward off pests or just stop them are listed below, and this list of recipesalso looked handy.

Cutoworm Collars

This absolutely classic remedy for cutworm is perhaps the simplest one yet. Simply fold newspaper or a sturdy piece of thin cardboard (from a cereal box, etc.) into a strip about four inches wide and perhaps six inches long. Fashion it into a circle or collar around the stem of the seedling, and push it into the ground about an inch. The cutworm operates below the surface of the soil usually, and this will simply detour it around your plants. This page offers some good additional information on cutworms, too.

Slug Beer and Boards

Another classic solution to pesky slugs that snack on cabbage plants is a shallow pan of beer in the garden. Just set it out the night before and in the morning the slugs are swimming. Chickens love this now marinated appetizer when they first run out of the coop, too! A board placed in the garden near the affected plants can also do the trick. Set it out at night, and turn it over in the morning to pluck off the little guys. Check out this list for even more ideas!

Plotting for Pests

Pests, like weeds, are one of the things every gardener knows is lurking somewhere out there. Organic gardeners tend to think of the soil first, which means plants are that much more resilient and healthy in the face of assorted troubles. For those pests and critters that do attempt to make a move on the garden, this article from Fine Gardening offers a wide variety of home remedies for many of the most common troubles.

Recipes, photos, (she is NOT blending up the Japanese beetles, by the way, but rather a REMEDY for them), step by step instructions and helpful commentary make this one worth hanging onto for future seasons.

Don't Let Pests Get the Best!

originally appeared in the Project Grow Newsletter, Summer 2006
photo by Ikes under Creative Commons license

In your garden, have the seeds sprouted with a fine rate of germination, only to be nibbled to the ground? Have you babied those cucumbers, only to have the plant destroyed by insects? Or how about the green worms on your broccoli—that you find at the dinner table? Gardening by its very nature includes nature, all of it, including what we think of as “troublesome pests.” In the same manner that plants are always growing and changing, so the pests in your garden may change and adapt year after year as well.

For optimum pest control, identifying the culprit is key. It is not useful or recommended to kill all the insects that you find on a plant, or to even eliminate all the “bad guys.” By removing all of a particular insect you run the risk of eliminating its predator as well, thus, creating a perfect situation for the pest to return in force.

You can also develop garden practices that will contribute to a healthier garden overall and certainly help in the control of unwanted insects. These healthy garden practices include good garden sanitation—removing diseased and infested plants from your garden, promptly getting rid of pest-ridden plant material, and rotating crops. Try companion planting—planting basil among tomatoes helps control hornworms, combining thyme or tomatoes with cabbage plantings controls flea beetles, cabbage maggots, white cabbage butterflies and imported cabbageworms. You can also sow catnip by eggplant to deter flea beetles, grow horseradish with potatoes to repel Colorado potato beetles, set onions in rows with carrots to control rust flies, grow radishes or nasturtiums with your cucumbers for cucumber beetle control. Nasturtiums also deter whiteflies and squash bugs, but they are most often used as a trap for aphids, which prefer them to other crops. Be sure to encourage beneficial insects and animals.

Did you ever consider repelling with smell? In his book “Your Organic Garden,” Jeff Cox writes about how night-flying moths approach flowers by flying upwind. If netting is placed over flowers the moths will still land and feed, indicating that they react to flower odor. If pests can’t smell your plants, maybe they will go elsewhere. Jeff recommends planting scented marigolds as thickly as you can around your garden. Mint is another fragrant plant, but since it quickly grows out of control, set it in pots around your garden. The oil from the leaves of rue can give some people a poison ivy-like rash, but this trait also deters Japanese beetles. Rue can be helpful grown as a border or scatter the leaf clippings if Japanese beetles are a pest. Sweet basil interplanted in the vegetable garden repels aphids, mosquitoes, and mites.

“Your Organic Garden” also lists a few home-brewed pest controls that many of you may already be familiar with. Results from these brews are certainly not guaranteed, so keep an eye on plants to monitor their effectiveness.

• Bug Juice: ½ cup of specific pest, mash well, mix with 2 cups water and strain. Mix 1/4 cup of this bug juice with a few drops of soap and 2 cups water and spray (wear gloves and always use nonfood utensils)
• Garlic Oil: Finely chop 10-15 garlic cloves and soak in 1 pint mineral oil for 24 hours. Strain and spray as is or dilute with water and add a few drops of soap.
• Hot Pepper Spray: Blend 1/2 cup of hot pepper with 2 cups water, strain and spray. Remember hot peppers burn eyes and skin.
• Killer Cooking Oil: Combine 1 tablespoon of dishwashing liquid with 1 cup of vegetable oil. Add 1 to 2 1/2 teaspoons of the oil/detergent mix to 1 cup of water and spray on infested plants once every seven days.
• Firewater: Mix two to four jalapeno, Serrano or habanero peppers, three cloves of garlic, and 1 quart water in a blender, or chop the peppers and garlic and let them steep in a quart jar of water set out in the sun for several days. Strain through cheesecloth, spray as needed, reapply after rain.
• Alcohol spray: Combine 1 to 2 cups of rubbing alcohol with 1 quart of water. Test spray a small area on one plant. Wait a day to check for damage before spraying entire plant. Or add between ½ and 1 cup of rubbing alcohol to 1 quart of insecticidal soap or horticultural oil sprays to increase effectiveness.

Pests

from the July 1997 newsletter

Mexican Bean Beetles (Epilachna varivestis)

Identification: These beetles resemble lady-bugs but tend to be a bit larger, are copper in color, and have 16 dots on their backs. Look for yellow egg clusters under bean leaves and yellow-orange larvae.
Damage: Both beetle and larvae voraciously devour bean leaves and will nibble on beans as well. They can obliterate a bean crop.
Prevention: Interplant potatoes, garlic, cloves, turnips, marigolds, and radishes. If you have a bean beetle problem, avoid its reoccurance next year by removing all dead bean plant material from the garden at the end of the season. DO NOT compost this material.
Control: It’s always best to keep an eye on your plants and catch pests and diseases early. Hand pick beetles and larvae and crush them or put them in kerosene. Look under leaves for eggs and crush them as well. You can also use floating row covers and beneficial nematodes.
Other possibilities: garlic, onion, and pepper juice spray will slow feeding. Lime and soap spray will irritate the beetles; rotenone (organic but very toxic) will kill them. We do not recommend rotenone until all else has failed- use it sparingly and with caution.


Flea Beetles (Phyllotreta striolata)

Identification: These beetles are small (1/4 inch or less), glossy, dark, and they jump. You may notice tiny holes in your plant leaves before you notice the beetles.
Damage: Flea beetles munch on cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, potato, turnip, and most other garden crops. They eat tiny holes in young leaves and can cause severe damage to young plants. Larvae eat seeds and roots.
Prevention & Control: Weed and cultivate frequently and remove crop remnants from area. Interplant mint (but for other gardeners’ sake don’t let them spread). Plant susceptible crops near shade giving crops as flea beetles are sometimes deterred by shade. The use of floating row covers is also quite effective. If the problem is acute: Use garlic, onion and pepper spray to repel beetles. Dust wet plants and wet ground around them with lime, lime spray or soap (like Dr. Bronners liquid peppermint diluted with water) with lime as a spray.