your pest problems have probably skyrocketed because you have used poisons on your garden. Stop. Let it go back to nature. Nature will solve all your problems. Grow all the cover crops you can. the more the better.

never use poisons of any kind.

if a crop does not want to grow then grow a different crop. Grow what works and avoid the rest.

My garden has NEVER had poisons in it!!! We've never resorted to poisons, and our family has been here over 200 years.

By no poisons, I mean no herbicides, no pesticides and no synthetic fertilizers. We use compost and manure. There are certain things I have to grow for my family, not growing the things we depend on is out of the question. We rotate to try to decrease the pests, but I believe our cover cropping and mulching is harboring them, making it easier for them to survive winter. I've decided I'm going to skip the cover cropping this year, and see if that makes a difference.

I am in the same boat as riley17. I have never used pesticide and am noticing that I have almost every pest that likes the veggies that I grow. The only missing this year is tomato hornworm.

Since you are presumably growing a cover crop to cover bare ground and provide green manure when dug under bugs shouldn't matter. Just leave your cover crop as undisturbed as possible. It's an excellent "sanctuary" for the pests and predators to find one another and balance up.When you are ready to use the ground again just cut it down and use the tops for mulch or add them to the compost pile, then till the roots and stubble under.

It would be helpful to enumerate the pests, in order of importance, and which ones have increased and by hos much. Cabbage looper is a very different beast from slugs for example. It is also no great help to rake debris if you are near woods for example.

gardendawgie, you sure are quick to blame people for stuff you have no knowledge of. Accussing someone of something with out knowing or even asking is down right rude and ignorant!

Its ok, don't worry about them being rude. :) I'm assuming they were only trying to help. Plus you never know they could have been having a bad day or something.

So, this year all of a sudden I got hit by aphids, and colorado potato beetles, which I'd never had before. Then the cucumber beetles, wire worms, cabbage loopers and flea beetles all got super worse. In the flea beetles case they got worse by the thousands. I have had those before but have managed to control them until this year. Good news though! I think I saw a soldier bug today! I googled him and I'm pretty sure thats what it was. :)
Uh-oh glib, my garden IS right near the woods, like 15 feet away. Is that bad? Also, I have never fertilized, and I just read a book on organic gardening that said you still need to add organic fertilizers to keep up with things like magnesium. It said soils deficient in those, i think it called them micronutrients, will be more pest prone. Do you think that could be part of my problem? I thought the compost took care of adding those things back into the soil.
Thanks for all the help!
Holly

Holly - The best way to find-out what the condition of your soil is have a soil test done. It's very cheap and will tell you what you need to add (if anything).

Greg
Southern Nevada

With regard to flea beetles, I read in an old issue of Horticulture magazine that their favorite summer crops are tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. They attack the tomatoes and peppers only when they are young, but never leave the eggplants all season long. Furthermore, they really love brassicas: cabbage, collards, Kale, etc. Therefore, you should not plant brassicas immediately behind a bed of solanaceas. Obviously, there's more to crop rotation than just avoiding planting the same family in the same place more often than every three years.

My garden has proven this info true this year. I planted brassicas in a raised bed last winter, and toward the end of the season, I was noticing a few flea beetles. Didn't know any better at that time, so I planted tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in the same bed this summer. The beetles were so bad all summer long that I finally just pulled everything out last week and planted a cover crop.

Moral of the story: know your enemy.

Certainly there is a link between soil and pests. In the spring I rescued a bed of favas that were both extremely pale and ravaged by bugs. They had been injected with the proper bacteria too. I just needed to add fairly large amounts of wood ash (about two gallons for a 4X12 bed), which increases the pH and provides most micronutrients. The plants became deep green and the bugs disappeared within two weeks. It has to do with the carb/proteins ratio. the bugs like the carbs. So you may try fertilization and see if it helps.

If you are near the woods raking debris will help only with slugs. Aphids do not exist if there are any ladybugs (in my case they show up only in late october, after the ladybugs have gone dormant). I am lucky that ladybugs overwinter in my garage, 15 ft from the garden. and you have to have your BT at the ready for the loopers. I wish I could advise you on the cuke beetles, because I get them too.