How about waiting a few days and letting a hard freeze do the dirty work on the aphids and white flies. Growing season is over. Last thing I'm worried about this time of year is bugs unless they are hanging on a plant I've brought indoors.

randy

Thanks, any early to mid season tips? Seems like I had more than normal. The Lady Bugs I bought did not do well.

Companion planting of things like Marigolds and Chrysanthenum Daisies (aka Shasta Daisies, pyrethrum) do a good job of keeping the nasty bugs away from your veggies. And if you have space plant a few ginnea pig veggies for the bugs to attack while protecting you main garden with companion plantings.

The best way to control bugs of any kind is to encourage a healthy ecosystem in your home landscape/garden. The best way to do this is to garden organically and avoid the use of insecticides. If you use any insecticide in the garden (even many of the organic ones), you run the risk of killing off the good predator bugs along with the bad bugs. Since bad bugs bounce back more quickly, the bad bugs WILL return and get the upper hand before the beneficial insects have a chance to rebound and control them.

I started gardening in Texas in the 1960s with my parents and grandparents and then continued gardening as an adult after I got married in the early 1980s. As a child, we used all kinds of poison, including DDT, and still had billions of bugs. As I began transitioning into organic gardening in the mid to late 1980s, I learned that the chemical insecticides tended to cause more problems than they solved.

There are a lot of things you can do to manage your insect population and they require that you be willing to take it slow and let mother nature work the way it is meant to work. Remember that EVERYTHING is part of the food chain, so there IS a predator for every garden pest.

I rely upon companion plantings in both the veggie garden and home landscape. I plant lots of companion plants that attract beneficial insects too. I NEVER use chemical pesticides as they will kill off the benefical insects too. I only use carefully targeted organic pesticides, such as using an organic ant killer like Serenade for fire ants or Sluggo for slugs/snails and pillbugs/sowbugs.

I learned years ago that feeding garden plants excessive amounts of chemical fertilizers tended to make those plants more attractive to insects. When I still used chemical fertilizers, I always had lots of aphids and spider mites on my tomato plants, for example. Since switching to organic fertilizers, I seldom have aphids or spider mites, and the few I see will get gobbled up pretty quickly by the beneficial insects.

You also will learn that you can tolerate a certain amount of damage from bugs without your crop being affected. For example, some years the flea beetles hit my tomato transplants hard. The plants always rebound on their own, though, so I just ignore the flea beetles while they are around.

You may need to release beneficial insects for a couple of years until a population becomes established. I released lady bugs for probably 3 years in a row, and now I have tons of them. We have lots of parasitic wasps and green lacewings and they are great garden helpers.

There are still some very challenging insects/bugs that are hard to control either organically or chemically. A couple that come to mind are leaf-footed bugs and stinkbugs. So, there are still some challenges.

I used to think grasshoppers were hard to control but have found that a combination of using Nosema in the spring (when the hoppers are still VERY small) and letting my guineas and chickens roam the yard in the spring and summer will keep the grasshopper population under control most of the time.

With every pest that you encounter, you have to examine your growing conditions and figure out why that particular pest is a problem. A common problem here in rural Love County in southern Oklahoma is the armadillo. These armadillos (and skunks too) come in and plow up your whole yard looking for grubs to eat. So, if you treat your yard with something that will control the grubs themselves, the armadillos will go away and leave your yard alone. We had a HUGE armadillo problem, but once I took care of the grub problem (organically, of course), the armadillos (and skunks) went away.

Any time the population of any given insect is out of control in your landscape or garden, you have to figure out what is wrong.....the out-of-control insect may seem to be the problem, but it honestly is the symptom of some other sort of problem. I hope I said that in a way that makes sense.

Dawn

I have instantly fallen in love with Miss Dawn!

She is telling you right. The only thing I can add is - I hate stink-bugs! Had a major infestation of them this year. I pretty much just ignored them. Apparently something ate them, because they just disappeared inside of two weeks.

I very seldom see aphids, didn't see one flea beetle this year, did lost the battle to asparagus beetles and sevin dusted their sorry little so-and-soes.

Feed the soil. I can't stress compost enough. Compost is your most bestest buddy! Even if you think you can't find find enough materials to make a pile - you can still pile on the mulch and let the worms eat it up.

In Honduras, the tomatoes were plagued with white-flies. Market growers actually called them "the plague". You could walk through a field and clouds of them would rise up until you had to put your shirt over your nose to be able to breathe. And aphids? Never seen such a sight!

I saw a few on my plants - but nothing to worry about.

They used a lot of insecticides and chemicals down there. DDT is still legal down there too.

The garden is an entire micro-ecosystem, which if managed properly mimics nature in a more intense fashion. We encourage the 'good' bugs - while discouraging the 'bad' ones.

But you have to consider the fact that without the bad bugs, the good ones would have nothing to eat!

Sorry 'bout the length of that comment. Dawn Just touched on my love of the soil and I got wordy. BTW, I also have seven dogs. *sighs* Don't know how I got that many of them seeing as how I don't even LIKE dogs! HEH-HEH!

Hi Trubbadubbadoo,

You don't ever have to apologize to ME about the length of your comments, because I tend to write long posts myself!

Compost? My favorite thing! I make tons and tons of it every year. My current 'working' pile is about 14' by 14' and about 4' tall. I've had it going for years now, and hope to use it this winter to replenish the veggie garden.

The 'new' pile that will replace it is only about 6' by 6' at this point and about 4' tall. I hope to make it a lot larger this fall and winter by adding leaves and such to it.

And, about those seven dogs......my dear son rescued a dog after the June floods in Gainesville, Texas, which is just across the river from us. So, make that eight dogs now. I keep saying that the Good Lord must want for us to have a LOT of pets as he keeps sending so many our way that need homes. I rescued a kitten myself after a heavy, flash flood-inducing rain, so the cats numbers continue to grow as well. One advantage to having country acreage is that you do have room for lots of four-footed friends. : )

Dawn

Thanks all,

Let me see if I have this right,
Don't drug the bugs,
Compost the most,
Organic fertilizer, and
plant extra.

thanks to all.

Mike:

You got it!

The key: work with nature and not against it!

Dawn

Mike:

Yep, what everybody said.

The planting extra part is very important, because everything needs to eat.

As homo-sapiens we must be caretakers of our environment.

For me - to deny any insect (except fleas, ticks, and mosquitoes) a meal is a crime. That's just me. I over-plant so that all my little friends are assured a good living.

So what if the cabbage has a few holes in it?

So what if an ear of sweet corn has been a bit chewed on before I got to it?

So what if a few horn-worms get in our tomatoes?

They all gotta eat.

It don't hurt us none.

And it all still tastes good.

Yeah, you got it.

Welcome to the movement!

Jeff