How to control bugs naturally, organically

Cucumber beetle-"bad bug" that spreads disease

Saturday, July 26, 2014

There are good bugs and then there are the bugs that eat up your harvest or give your plants diseases.  You have to be extremely careful in applying any insecticides (bug killers) as they will kill off the beneficial insects (like bees) that pollinate your veggies and increase your harvests.  

There are also bugs, wasps and insects that kill the “bad bugs.”  Using insecticides kills all insects and bugs, good and “bad”.  If you use non-chemical methods of control for the first couple of years, your garden will come into balance.  It can be very hard to resist the urge to get out the sprays, but there are other alternatives.

The best approach is to let nature take its course.  If you have bad bugs, the good bugs will quickly follow and provide equilibrium in the garden.  You can also purchase beneficial insects via mail order.  If you go this route, be sure that you will be at home when they are delivered so that you can get them released as quickly as possible.  Good bugs include parasitic wasps, assassin bugs, hover flies, lacewing, praying mantis, and ladybugs among others.

Ladybug eating aphids

You can encourage good bugs by planting flowers either around your vegetable patch or actually with your vegetables.  Marigolds are a “bad bug” deterrent.  I plant these all around my flower garden.

You can also encourage birds to your yard by having trees, shrubs and flowers that attract birds.  Keeping a bird bath with shrubs nearby so the birds can hide in the shrubs is a great way to get birds into your yard.  Birds will be happy to eat as many bugs as they can find!  For those that can, chickens or ducks provide the same service.

Stink bug-"bad bug"

Using a garden hose to dose down the insects can be a good strategy; just make sure that you are not watering a plant’s leaves that are susceptible to fungal diseases such as tomatoes, cucumbers or zucchinis.  

You can also go insect hunting and pull off the insects, larvae and caterpillars and throw them into a bowl with soap and water.  I like the book “Good Bug, Bad Bug”.  It has great pictures of both as well as pictures of them as caterpillars so you have a reference of both.  You want to encourage the good bugs in your garden.

For Japanese beetles, I use an attractor that is quite a distance from the vegetable garden.  They love roses so I go hunting for them on our roses every day.  We also apply Milky Spore to keep the grub population down around the roses so we have fewer adults in the summer.  It may take a couple of years for the spores to multiply in the ground, so don’t give up if the first year you don’t see a huge decrease in Japanese beetles.

For ants, you have to control the aphids.  A recipe for catching the ants and aphids:  2 cups of vinegar, 2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of water in a gallon jug with a lid.  Drill 3 small holes in the lid, large enough for the ants and aphids, but too small for a little bee.  Place in trouble areas.

If you are just overrun with the bad bugs, you can look on OMRI web site to see what the organic insecticides are:  http://www.omri.org/omri-lists  I use Safer Insecticidal Soap and Neem Oil for my indoor plants.

Here are some make your own insect deterrents.  Make sure you test on a few leaves to insure that it won’t adversely affect the plant you are trying to protect.

All purpose spray.  1 garlic bulb, 1 onion, 1 teas dry cayenne pepper, 1 teas liquid soap, 1 quart of water.  Mix water, garlic, pepper and onion together in a food processor, let steep an hour or so, drain through cheesecloth, add liquid soap and you are ready to spray away!

Hot pepper spray.  Good for repelling insects, squirrels, rabbits, and other curious mammals.  1 cup of hot peppers in a quart of water.  Mix in food processor, strain through a cheesecloth and you are ready to use.  Be careful to not get the liquid on your hands and then touch your eyes or mouth.  It will burn.

Tomato-leaf spray.  This is toxic to soft bodied insects like aphids.  It also attracts beneficial wasps.  Take the leaves off the bottom of your tomato plant, 2 cups.  Put in food processor with 1.5 quarts of water.  Let steep overnight, strain out leaves.  Spray on affected leaves, especially the undersides where they like to hide.

Easy ways to make a new vegetable garden bed

Using a hose to lay out your garden bed

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Making a new garden bed can seem like a monumental, labor intensive task, but it doesn’t have to be. There are several minimal labor ways to make a new bed. My favorite begins with a hose and old newspaper and/or cardboard.

Siting a New Garden

The best place to put a vegetable garden is close to the house where there is good sun, ideally a spot that gets southern exposure. Check out where the sun falls throughout a sunny day to see where the best locations are in your yard. 

Don’t be concerned if your garden spot gets some shade each day. Fruiting vegetables need the most sun, 6-8 hours.

Root vegetables require less and leafy vegetables require the least. Leafy vegetables appreciate getting afternoon shade in the hot days of summer. 

I have a spot on the northeast side of the house that I like to put leafy greens. It gets the morning sun, but the cool afternoon shade.  This allows us to grow lettuce through the summer.

Once you have picked out a spot, you can use a hose to lay out what you want the bed to look like. We then use a spray can of landscaping paint to paint out the edges of the bed.

Brand new mulched garden bed

Transforming Lawn to Garden

The easiest next step is to cut the grass inside your new bed as short as possible. Then lay several layers of newspaper or cardboard over the top of the closely sheared grass and cover with compost then mulch. Now, just let the bed lay until the grass dies. The grass and its roots adds organic matter to the soil as well.  Test the soil before planting to see what nutrients you need to add.  Use a balanced fertilizer when you plant.

Another option is after mowing close to the ground and laying the newspaper/cardboard, dump garden soil over it all, add compost, fertilize and plant immediately. Just be careful to not cut through the newspaper or you will get grass growing in your new garden bed.

We have also used a sod cutter, cutting up the sod in our new bed. Then, turning it upside down, covering with newspaper/cardboard, a couple of inches of compost, mulch, and plant.  This is definitely more work, but you have less chance of having to pull stray grass if you want to plant immediately.

Our garden is a combo of garden beds and containers

Types of Garden Beds

If you don’t need your garden bed to be “pretty”, a quick way to plant is to simply poke holes in bags of garden soil, put the perforated side down, cut open the top side of the bag and plant away. The plastic underneath will keep the grass from growing through. The downside is that your veggie plant roots won’t be able to grow down as well either. But if you don’t have time, this is a good way to get started. You can edge around the bags and removed them the following year, adding compost and have a ready made bed for the following year.

You can also go the raised bed route. There are many do it yourself, pre-cut raised bed kits that you can purchase. Use the same techniques above to make sure the grass won’t grow up through into your veggies. Newspaper and cardboard works great for this. Fill with good soil, compost, an all natural fertilizer and you are ready to plant.

The pros of raised beds is that they warm up quicker in the spring and you control the soil that you are growing in. The cons, the temperature is not as constant as if in the ground and they will need to be watered more often.

Potted eggplant with petunias

You can also opt to have your garden in pots. This is a great way to start small and quickly. It is amazing how many varieties of any veggie you love have been developed to grow in containers.

There are several options to getting your garden bed in place that don’t require a ton of time or hard labor. Now is the time to choose one and get your spring garden growing!

Growing zucchini and summer squash

Baby zucchini

Saturday, July 25, 2015

Zucchini is a summer squash.  They love heat, fertile soil, and sustained moisture.  You can plant them as soon as all danger of frost is past and they will be producing in just a few short weeks.  They go right through until fall if you keep them picked.  All plants are programmed to reproduce so if you keep the fruits picked, the plant will keep trying to replace it.

Squash originated in Mexico.  There are cave drawings from 8000 to 6500 BC depicting squash.  Squash was grown extensively by Native Americans as part of the “Three Sisters” of squash, corn and beans.

Squash love organic matter.  If you throw a few seeds in your compost pile, you will be rewarded with exuberant vines.

Zucchini is full of nutrition.  It contains antioxidants, carotenes, lutein, folates, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin C, and B vitamins.  For more specific nutritional information, Summer squash nutrition info

Zucchini bush

Plant when nighttime temps are 55F or warmer.  Add a fertilizer rich in phosphorous a week after transplanting, when flowers first appear and again when fruits begin to form.  They love water, too.  

Zucchini can be easily grown in a container, too.  Look for compact bush types like Bush Baby, Yellow Crookneck, Eight Ball, Cue Ball, Golden Delight, Anton, Patio Star, Giambo, Astia, Raven, Cosmos Hybrid (look for bush types versus vining types).  If growing in a pot, keep well watered and don’t let dry out.  

Don’t panic when the first blooms fall off without producing any fruits.  There are male and female flowers.  If yours falls off, it was likely a poor guy that withered without the love of a gal.  There can also be some false starts with malformed fruits.  Don’t worry, the plant will put on more blooms and you will be on your way to zucchini overload before you know it!

Give zucchini a mid summer side dressing of fertilizer or compost if planted in the ground.  Fertilize every couple of weeks with a liquid fertilizer if in a pot.

If you allow the fruit to get too big, the skin gets tough and the seeds hard.  Optimum length is no longer than 6 inches for the juiciest fruit and the smallest seeds.  We just picked 2 that were more like a foot long and they were still delicious.  

Our favorite preparation is to slice and grill it.  We slice them lengthwise, brush on olive oil, dust with sea salt, and put them on the grill with whatever we are cooking as the main course.  Grilling or roasting brings out the sweetness in the fruit.  Olive oil does not reach smoke temperatures until 350-400F so is still a good choice when grilling below 325.

If they grow large, you can use them for zucchini bread or cut in half, scoop out the seeds, stuff with a sausage tomato sauce and bake until tender.  

For more ideas on what to do with an abundant zucchini harvest, check out  What to do with all that zucchini?!

There are a couple of pests that you have to worry about with zucchini-the cucumber beetle, the squash bug and squash vine borer.  Cucumber beetle can infect the vine/bush with bacterial wilt.  When you see them, pull them off and drop in soapy water.

In late summer in areas with high humidity, you can get powdery mildew.  This can be treated by spraying with baking soda, copper or fresh whey.  I have found that planting a second plant around the first of July is the best approach.  This plant will be kicking in as the second starts slowing down.

What's growing in the mid July garden

Saturday, July 12, 2014

July in the USA brings thoughts of Independence Day, fireworks, and ripe tomatoes!  This year, the cherry type tomatoes started ripening mid June, but the bigger tomatoes are still green!  It was a long spring this year, causing the summer veggies to be behind by a few weeks.

I have baby eggplants, zucchini, and the Cayenne, Jalapeño, Pimento, and Ancho pepper plants loaded with baby peppers.  I have harvested cucumbers and banana peppers.  With the cooler spring, many of the lettuce plants that have bolted are still sweet.  The best I have found so far for keeping flavor in hot weather is Red Sails.

I have harvested basil, mint, oregano and tarragon already.  The oregano, cilantro, dill and lavender are all in bloom.  I thin out the plants so they don’t overtake the garden and cut the remaining back by two thirds.  I put the cuttings either in the sun to dry or loosely in paper bags that I let dry in a closet.  Once dry, I strip the leaves from the stems and store in an airtight container or bag out of direct sunlight.

I should get at least one more cutting before fall if I choose.  Or I can just let them bloom.  They look beautiful and the bees love them!

I end up with gallon bags of dried herbs which I mix together and give to friends and family.  I put these herbs in and on many dishes.  It tastes great added to fries, sauces, meats, and dressings.  Here is what has traditionally gone into Herbes de Provence: thyme, marjoram/oregano, rosemary, savory, basil, and tarragon.  Feel free to improvise and use whatever you have from your kitchen garden!

The first round of garlic has been harvested and is getting hardened in the shade outdoors for two weeks and the elephant garlic looks to be ready to harvest next week end.

It is time to fertilize all the pots and garden vegetable plants to keep them growing.  I also fertilize the basil so I can get plenty of pesto frozen for the winter!

The first round of lettuce has gone to seed.  When you see the white fuzzies, they are ready to save.  I just pull the seed heads, break apart, put in a ziplock freezer bag, label with type and date, and store in the refrigerator.  I also re-seeded our Earth boxes with some of the seeds last month.  These are starting to sprout, but aren’t quite ready to transplant.  I had a few small volunteer lettuce plants elsewhere in the garden that I transplanted to the Earth boxes as well.  

The sprouting broccoli I seeded at the beginning of June is finally taking off in the Earthbox.  These were seeds I saved from last year’s plants.  I will transplant at least one to the garden bed.  I use many of these leaves for salads during the hot summer when lettuce is the most challenged.  If you love the taste of broccoli, you will love a salad made with sprouting broccoli leaves!

Our Tuscan kale is big, blue and beautiful!  It is still sweet.  I planted it in the garden as well as pots.  It is doing great in both locations.  I did have some caterpillars munching on the potted kale.  I picked those off by hand last month.

Tuscan kale with petunia

I watered the beds for the first time at the end of June.  It rained a few days this week and is calling for rain again Monday and Tuesday.  Looks like I won’t have to water again for at least a week.  It is important to keep an even water supply to summer veggies.  Uneven watering can cause your tomatoes to crack and your other veggies to put a hold on delivering you fruits and your lettuces to bolt and become bitter tasting.

If you live where it is getting really hot, 90’s during the day and upper 70’s at night, you may also see your tomatoes and peppers production drop.  My peppers on the patio last year got sun scald, too!  If you see sun scald in your potted plants, moving them to where they get some protection from afternoon sun is beneficial.  

I planted some bush green beans this week, too.  Days to harvest was 52.  They will likely come on sooner than that since they were planted late and it is warmer than in the spring.  Mid-August we should have green beans.  Bush beans typically develop quicker than pole beans.  Check the seed packet to see how many days from planting to harvesting the variety you are interested in takes.

Lettuce seeds will not sprout in soil temps in the upper 70’s or higher.  I like to start my lettuce seeds in pots I keep on the north or east side of the house in the shade during the summer.  When they get large enough, I then transplant to a pot or the garden bed.

Summer garden is in full swing!

Permaculture in a Midwest garden and yard

Interplanted suburban garden

Saturday, June 28, 2014

You may have heard something about permaculture.  The book “Gaia’s Garden” brought this type of gardening to many.  What is it?

Permaculture is creating a synergistic garden; one that is symbiotic and supporting.  It includes enriching the soil, planting for nutrients, planting for shade, planting for food, landscaping for water, planting to attract beneficial insects, planting to repel bad bugs, planting to optimize your harvests.  It is all of this combined to create a self sustaining garden and yard.

You can go big and do it all or start small and work your way into a full permaculture yard.

If you are just getting started, the first step is planning.  For planning, I would join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) to find out what grows well in your area and what you like to eat that can be grown locally.  You will get fresh nutritious food while supporting your local farmer.  It was amazing how well we ate and how small our grocery bill was when we first joined a CSA!  We also discovered many vegetables that we loved but had never eaten.

Before placing your garden bed, look at how your water drains.  Create small swells/berms to move the water to where you want it to go-like your vegetables.  Utilize rain barrels to capture water.  There are some quite attractive rain barrels available on line and even at big box stores.  Together these will significantly reduce your watering needs.

Next, determine how the sun traverses through your yard.  You will want to put the sun lovers where they get southern exposure.  Add shade to reduce your utility bills and give relief to your plants.  In the spring, all of your vegetables love the sun.  Come summer, many appreciate some shade and cooler temperatures, particularly greens.  Even peppers get sunburned when temps get in the 90’s in full sun all day.  Some relief from afternoon soon is appreciated.

When you are thinking of where to place those shade trees and bushes, consider adding fruit trees and bushes that you and the birds will enjoy.  Planting trees and bushes provide shelter for birds that love to eat insects.  Look for trees and bushes that also provide food for the birds, including winter berries.  Birds help to keep the garden in balance.  Don’t forget a water source so they can get a drink.  Make sure the water stays clean or the birds can get sick just like we do from contaminated water.

Now you are ready to place your garden bed.  For prepping the soil, a super easy method is to do sheet mulching which I outlined here http://victorygardenonthegolfcourse.blogspot.com/2014/02/easy-ways-to-make-new-vegetable-garden.html

You are basically composting in place, building incredible rich soil, alive with microbial and worm activity, which provide all the nourishment plants need to thrive.  The great thing about this technique is that no tilling is required!  Prepare in the fall and by spring, the bed is ready for planting.

When the garden bed is ready for planting, do a soil test, add the nutrients indicated.  I also add minerals to the soil as most soil today is depleted of their minerals.  After getting your soil in balance, you will be able to grow the right crops in the right rotational order and compost to keep the soil fertile and in balance without outside inputs.

Beneficial, pollinating insects love the herbal flowers and the ornamental flowers.  The pollinators insure the vegetable flowers are pollinated to produce their fruits.  If the flowers are not pollinated, they will just fall off.  We garden organically and only use organic insecticides in dire times.  Insecticides don’t know the difference between a good bug and a bad bug; it kills them all.  If you can wait, the bad bugs will attract the good bugs that eat them.  Then, you will have balance.  The first year, I bought insects that feed on the bad insects (lady bugs, parasitic wasps, and preying mantis).  It takes them a year or two to get established.

You can add beekeeping to your yard.  Or if that is not feasible, just placing mason bee homes on trees will attract these natives to your yard for pollinating.

You can plant flowers that naturally repel the bad bugs like nasturtium and wild marigold (tagetes minuta).  Even deer do not like the fragrance of marigolds.  Sometimes just surrounding your garden with marigolds and fragrant Mediterranean herbs is enough to keep the deer out of your garden.  I put nasturtium in pots and circle the garden bed with marigolds.

Interplanting vegetables and herbs that support others is a win-win.  An example is placing “nitrogen fixers” next to plants that love nitrogen.  You can also place nitrogen lovers in the spot the nitrogen fixers were.   Be conscious of how you interplant and succession plant your vegetables to keep the soil in balance and give each vegetable the nutrients it needs. Well known nitrogen fixers are peas and beans.  Clover also does the job and it is edible.

By having a variety of plants mixed in your garden, the bugs that prey on one type of plant will not be able to just hop next door for their next meal.  This keeps uncontrollable infestations from occurring.

A couple of common plants that bring an assortment of nutrients up from deep in the soil is mustard and dandelions.  If you want a larger leaf dandelion, the French dandelion is the ticket.  You get great salad greens even in the heat of summer and an auto nutrient fertilizer.

There are even plants that are good for breaking up your soil.  These are ones that go deep, like daikon, chicory, dandelion, and mustard.

This is just some of the highlights of “permaculture” to give you an idea of what it is about.

What to plant in your vegetable garden over the summer

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Wondering what you can plant each month in the summer?  Here are plantings by month.  June planting is for summer harvesting.  You begin planting end of July and through August for fall and winter harvests.

June

Basil

Bush beans

Beets

Broccoli

Broccoli raab

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Carrots

Cauliflower

Chard

Collards

Corn

Cucumbers

Eggplant

Bulbing fennel

Kale

Leeks

Okra

Parsnips

Salsify

Summer squash

Sweet potatoes

Tomatoes

Turnips

Watermelons

July

Basil

Bush beans

Beets

Broccoli

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Chard

Chinese cabbage

Collards

Corn

Endive

Kale

Kohlrabi

Mustard greens

Parsnips

Rutabagas

Salsify

Scallions

Spinach

Tomatoes

Turnips

August

Arugula

Bush beans

Beets

Cabbage

Corn salad

Endive

Kale

Lettuce

Mustard

Radishes

Scallions

Spinach

Turnips

First ripe tomatoes!

Yellow Tumbling Tom

Monday, June 16, 2014

It is finally here; the first ripe tomatoes!  The number one vegetable grown in gardens across America is the tomato.  There is nothing like a vine ripened tomato fresh from the garden.

My first to the finish line in my garden this year are the Yellow Tumbling Tom and Baby Boomer.

Yellow Tumbling Tom is a dwarf that is happy in a pot or in the ground.  It is my first year growing this variety.  It will grow to 20-25” tall by only 6” wide.  You can put several of these plants in a single large container.  They are very ornamental, cascading over the sides of the container with their bright yellow fruits.

You can also grow the heirloom Red Tumbling Tom.  It has red cherry tomatoes and cascades up to 30” long.  It is a larger plant than the yellow hybrid.

Baby Boomer is a small cherry size red tomato on a dwarf plant as well.  Baby Boomer is an upright plant that will grow 20-25” by 20-25”.  It is purported to be a very prolific dwarf, yielding up to 300 fruits per plant.  They produce right up to frost.

Baby Boomer

To keep your tomatoes healthy and producing all season long, keep even moisture to them, don't water the foliage, and fertilize with one high in potash (the last number in NPK listings).  Uneven watering will cause fruits to crack.  Tomatoes are susceptible  to fungal diseases and water on their leaves encourages fungal growth.

How often you fertilize depends on whether you are growing your tomatoes in the ground or in a pot.  If in the ground, fertilize when first planted and then monthly after the first fruits appear.  I get the fertilizer specifically for tomatoes since it has high potash and the minerals calcium, magnesium and iron that are needed for robust fruits.  Lack of calcium can result in blossom end rot.  Egg shells have lots of calcium in them so you can crush the shells and place under the mulch around your plants as well.