Potions and Practices for Organic Pest Control

On any warm summer day, your garden is filled with flying, crawling, and jumping insects. But very few of these creatures arc plant pests. Most of them—including spiders, lady beetles, and many wasps and flies—are more interested in capturing other insects than in aggravating gardeners. So controlling the few insects that are pests really isn't hard. Organic gardeners have devised lots of useful sprays, barriers, and traps for controlling pests without chemical pesticides.

Pest insects usually have specific food requirements. Many of the pest control formulas in this chapter work by tricking pests into thinking that they are on the wrong plant or making them eat something that they can't digest.

You'll also find formulas in this chapter for bigger pests, like squirrels, deer, cats, and dogs. These pesky animals can frustrate gardeners by eating or trampling plants. But, although we don't want animals to hurt our gardens, we also don't want to hurt the animals, so all of the formulas you'll find here are strictly nonpoisonous. They work by conditioning ani- Ichneumon mals to look elsewhere for dinner. wasp Use these same approaches when developing your own formulas to solve unusual pest problems in your garden. For example, if you have a problem with an insect that eats one type of plant but is never seen on another, try planting the two types of plants close to each other to confuse the pest and lessen the damage. Or you might brew a tea from leaves of the plant the pest ignores and use it to drench the plant that the pest likes. It just might fool them!

Your first defense against Pests

If you spot insect pests on a plant, simply pick them off! Then dispense with the pests using two flat rocks or whatever squashing method you can think up.

If the pests are too small, fast, or numerous for hand-picking, take action right away with an appropriate pest control formula. Pest populations tend to build up very quickly, and it's always easier to control a pest problem the day you discover it than to wait for another day—by then, you may face double the problem.

Deluxe Seed-Starting and Soil-Block Mix

Your seedlings will get off to a great start in a loose, light planting mix like this recipe from Maine's master organic grower Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower. Use the mix in traditional plastic seedling flats, recycled yogurt cups, or other containers, or try making soil blocks—lightly compressed cubes of potting soil made with a special tool called a soil block-maker (see "Sources," beginning on page 308). Eliot says that the advantage of starting your seedlings in soil blocks is that "roots grow throughout the block of the soil up to the edges and then wait, poised to continue growing as soon as they're set into the garden, instead of circling around the walls and becoming rootbound as they do if grown in regular containers."

Ingredients and Supplies
10-quart bucket (for measuring)
1/2 cup lime
40 quarts peat moss
Dust mask
Wheelbarrow
1 buckets coarse sand or perlite
1 cup colloidal phosphate 1 cup greensand
1 cup blood meal (if you plan to use the
mix for growing larger transplants) I bucket soil
1 buckets very well-aged compost, sifted

Directions
1. Mix the lime into the peat moss. Wear a dust mask to avoid breathing dust from dry ingredients. A wheelbarrow is a good mixing container.
2. Combine the peat-lime mixture with the coarse sand or perlite, the colloidal phosphate, and the greensand, which provides potassium and trace elements. If you're making this mix for growing larger transplants, add the blood meal, too. Leave out the blood meal if you're making small soil blocks for germinating seeds—they don't need the extra nourishment.
3. Mix in the soil and the compost and stir all ingredients together thoroughly.
4. Fill your containers with the mix and tap them to eliminate any large air pockets. Then plant your seeds according to the packet directions and loosely cover the containers with plastic to keep the mix moist until they sprout.

Yield: About 1 bushels of planting mix

Note: To make soil blocks, Eliot recommends moistening the mix with about I part water to 3 parts mix. Spread the moistened mix on a hard surface at a depth that is thicker than the blocks you're making. Press the block-maker into the mix with a quick push, followed by a twisting motion when it hits the table surface. Then lift the block-maker, set it into your tray and eject the blocks with the plunger. You can set your finished soil blocks in regular plastic seedling flats or, Eliot suggests, try using plastic bread trays from a commercial bakery.


Word of Damping-Off
Moisten your planting mix before using a soil block maker—moist mix makes it easier to form blocks that will hold together.

The compost in Eliot Coleman's seed-starting mix will help prevent damping-off, a fungal disease that infects seedling stems and causes the young plants to fall over and die. Other steps to prevent damping-off include:
► Providing good air circulation. Run a small fan near the pots and don't plant seeds too thickly.
►Cover seeds with a layer of milled light sphagnum moss (often sold as "No Damp Off"). Studies have shown the moss contains compounds that inhibit damping-off.
►Give seedlings the brightest light you can. If you don't have a greenhouse or large south-facing window, use fluorescent shop lights and keep your plants just an inch or so below the tubes

Raise Your Beds and Lower Your Labor

Improve your soil with NO digging, using this nifty raised bed recipe from landscape designer Pat Lanza of Wurtsboro, New York. You just layer the ingredients for these "lasagna" beds right on top of the existing sod or soil. Pat says that her recipe will give you a raised garden bed "in half the time and with a third the work" of conventional bed-preparation methods! Pat's "lasagna" recipe is for a 4 X 12-foot garden bed.

Ingredients and Supplies

Newspapers, wet (no glossy colored sections)

4-cubic-foot bale peat moss, moistened

3 bushels grass clippings

3 bushels shredded leaves

3 bushels compost

4 bags dehydrated manure or 4 wheel - barrows full of aged barnyard manure

1 bucket wood ashes or 4 cups limestone

Plastic sheet (to cover bed)

Stones or bricks

Directions

1. Measure the bed and mark the corners, then stomp down any tall weeds or grass.

2. Lay wet newspaper—about 10 to 12 sheets thick—over the sod, overlapping the edges.

3. Now make your "lasagna": Cover the paper with a 2-inch layer of moistened peat moss, then 4 inches of grass clippings, 2 more inches of peat, then 4 inches of shredded leaves, 2 inches of peat, 4 inches of compost, 2 inches of peat, and 4 inches of manure. (You can substitute other organic materials, such as hay or straw, for the peat moss, grass, leaves, compost, and manure.)

4. Moisten each layer thoroughly as you go, repeating the layers until all the ingredients are used. Sprinkle the ashes or lime over the top of the bed.

5. Cover this "lasagna" with plastic, using rocks or bricks to secure the edges, and let it "bake" for at least a few weeks—the longer the better.

6. When you're ready to start planting, remove the plastic, and stir all the ingredients together with a garden fork. Then pop in your plants, water, and mulch.

Yield: One 4 X 12-foot raised bed that can provide fresh herbs, vegetables, and flowers for 1 to 4 people all season

Note: Pat says this recipe gives you a rich, raised bed with delicious soil and without any digging. "It's so easy, and it takes little time and little money," she adds. And, just one season after you build your bed, you'll lind that even the hardest clay soil under it

will be looser due to the magic worked by the composted materials in the bed (and the earthworms they attract).

Create the perfect soil for raised beds! After covering the top of the pile with plastic, sun-bake lasagna-like layers of organic ingredients for a few weeks. The materials will break down over time to create rich, crumbly compost you can grow your plants in.

Paralyzing Pest Salsa

Paralyze pests with salsa that's only a little stronger than you might eat on your chips. The creator of this formula, Santa Barbara gardener and author Kathleen Yeomans, uses it to control pests ranging from ants to black widow spiders. "This is my favorite all-purpose insect spray," Kathleen says. According to Kathleen, the spray will make ants pass out cold, and it has actually killed a black widow spider.

Ingredients and Supplies

2 pounds ripe, blemished tomatoes

1 large onion

1 pound fresh chili peppers

2 cloves garlic

Food processor or blender

1 cup vinegar

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Cheesecloth or coffee filter

Pump spray bottle

Directions

1. Roughly chop the tomatoes, onion, peppers, and garlic.

2. Place the chopped vegetables in a food processor or blender and blend until liquefied.

3. Add vinegar and pepper to the mixture.

4. Strain the mixture through several layers of cheesecloth or a disposable coffee filter.

5. Pour the strained liquid into the pump spray bottle.

6. Spray the liquid directly on pests that you spot in your garden.

Yield: About 3 cups of insect-knockout salsa

Note: Crushed garlic contains allicin, the smelly compound that confounds the sensory receptors of insects in search of a tasty plant feast. Hot peppers are loaded with fiery capsaicin, which gives a chemical burn to marauding mammals and some solt-bodied insects. Onions help give the salsa an extra aromatic kick, and the sulfur in them may suppress some fungal diseases. Many pests avoid tomatoes, so the unmistakable tomato odor signals them to look elsewhere.

Caution: This salsa can be highly irritating if it gets in your eyes or mouth, so spray it only on a windless day.

Satisfy Acid-Loving Plants with Sulfur

Even if your soil isn't naturally acidic, you can grow acid-loving plants like azaleas, rhododendrons, or blueberries, says Dan Hartmann, general manager of Hartmann's Plantation in Grand Junction, Michigan. The secret is to add the right amount of sulfur to the soil to lower the pH. Dan explains how to figure out "the right amount."

Ingredients and Supplies
Soil pH test results
Granular or powdered sulfur
Peat moss or acidic compost

Directions
1. Before you can determine how much sulfur to add, you need to get your soil tested to find out the pH. Check with your garden center or local extension office for information on testing services,- home test kits are also available.
2. Use the chart on the facing page to determine how much sulfur to add to lower the pH to about 5.5, which is low enough for blueberries and many other acid-lovers.
3. "If possible, apply the sulfur to the planting area in the fall," Dan advises, "or at the very least 1 month before you plant in the spring."
4. If you absolutely have to plant immediately, amend the soil in the planting hole with up to 50 percent peat moss. Then apply the sulfur to the top of the soil just beyond the planting hole. The naturally acidic peat moss will get the plants started and by the time their roots reach into the soil outside the peaty area, the sulfur will have had time to lower the pH.
5. Dan says you'll also need to add more sulfur in the future. "Probably every year if you started with a pH 7 soil,- every other year for pH 6.5,- and every 3 to 4 years if your soil was pH 6." He cautions that you should apply sulfur only in the winter when the plants are dormant.

Super - Simple Seed Starting Mix

This variation on Connie Beck's mix (above) substitutes vermiculite (moisture-holding bits of expanded mica), guaranteeing that transplants get off to a good start.

Ingredients and Supplies
1 part vermiculite
1 part compost (sifted)
Milled sphagnum peat moss, or clean, fine sand

Directions
1. Blend vermiculite into compost and fill flats or small (4-inch) pots with the mix.
2. Sow your seeds as directed on the package.
3. Sprinkle a fine dusting of moss or sand on the surface of the mix to discourage the fatal disease called "damping-off" that can infect seedlings at ground level in moist conditions.

Fruitful fruit trее fertilizer

With plant food—as with people food—moderation is the key. Fruit trees need nitrogen to bear good crops, but too much nitrogen makes them grow too many leaves at the expense of flowers and fruit. Fish emulsion is an excellent source of nitrogen for fruit trees. By following a three-times-a-year fertilization program, you can bring young fruit trees to bear without a hitch.

Ingredients and Supplies

1 teaspoon fish emulsion

5 gallons water

5 gallon bucket

Directions

1. To fertilize newly planted fruit trees, mix the fish emulsion and water in the bucket and apply. Soak the feeder root area (see the illustration at the right) with the full 5 gallons of formula 3 times: once in early spring while trees are still dormant, once after blossoms fall, and again in early summer.

2. Every year after the first year, increase the concentration of fish emulsion by 1 teaspoon, until the trees reach maturity. Apply the full 5 gallons to the feeder root area 3 times per year, just as described above. By the time the tree is full-size, you'll probably be using 10 teaspoons of concentrated liquid fish fertilizer with every 5 gallons of water for a semi-dwarf (12- to 15-foot-tall) tree.

Yield: 5 gallons of fruit tree fertilizer

Variation: Another good way to fertilize is to mulch your fruit trees early in the spring with 2 or 3 inches of compost or hay that's been fortified with a high-nitrogen organic material like manure. Simply sprinkle 2 shovelfuls of dried manure over the ground before you apply the mulch.

When you fertilize young fruit trees, pour the mix around each tree in a band that extends T inside the drip line to 3' outside the drip line. This way, you'll reach most of the young tree's feeder roots.

Super - Simple Potting Mix

What could possibly be simpler than this two-ingredient container mix recipe from Connie Beck, who teaches vocational horticulture in San Diego County, California. You can buy perlite—a very lightweight natural mineral—at garden centers.

Ingredients and Supplies
I part perlite
1 part compost (sifted)

Directions
1. Moisten the perlite before you start mixing—it's usually very dusty.
2. Mix the perlite into the compost, and you're ready to plant!

Note: Connie says that this mix is so good at preventing diseases that she lacks examples of plant problems to show her students.

Flowering houseplant fertilizer

Foliage plants will put on plenty of leaf growth if you feed them with a high-nitrogen fertilizer, like fish emulsion. But flowering houseplants need more potassium and phosphorus to put on a blooming big show. Go ahead and give flowering plants fish emulsion when you fertilize your foliage plants, but supplement their diet with this mix, which has an NPK (nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium) ratio of 5-6-4.

Ingredients and Supplies

2 parts cottonseed meal

2 parts bonemeal

2 parts wood ashes

Bowl or bucket for mixing

Directions

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl.

2. Using a fork, work the fertilizer into the top layer of soil, applying every 6 to 8 weeks at a rate of 1 teaspoon per 6-inch pot.

3. Store unused fertilizer in a sealed, labeled container for future feedings.

Be gentle when you work fertilizer into houseplants soil—you don't want to tear up the plant's roots. Use an old fork or a chopstick to mix the fertilizer into the soil without injuring the plant.

A Quick Pick-Me-Up for Plants

The caffeine in coffee gives us a quick pick-me-up, but coffee and coffee grounds contain nutrients that can give plants a gentle jolt. They're a rich source of nitrogen, tannic acids, and other nutrients. Acid-loving plants, especially, respond to coffee grounds and leftover coffee. (For a list of plants that will benefit from a coffee pick-me-up, see "Acid-Loving Plants" on the facing page.)

Ingredients and Supplies
Coffee grounds
Newspaper

Directions
1. Air-dry coffee grounds in a thin layer on newspaper outdoors.
2. Work the grounds directly around the base of acid-loving plants, or, for container plants, sprinkle the surface of the soil lightly with grounds.
3. Repeat monthly.

Note: You can skip the drying step by putting wet grounds directly into your compost pile. II you don't have enough coffee grounds to go around, stop by the local coffee shop or diner and load up. Most are happy to let you take all you can carry. You can also water plants with diluted leftover colfee in water for a quick green-up. For outdoor garden plants, use a 1:2 dilution of coffee in water. For tender or indoor plants, use a 1:4 dilution.

Don't throw away those coffee grounds! Instead, spread them out in а '1/4" layer on a metal tray to dry. They'll make excellent fertilizer for your acid-loving plants.

Save your eggshells Too
When you set aside the coffee grounds from your morning coffee, make sure you save the eggshells from your breakfast eggs as well. Sprinkle the eggshells in your compost pile. Eggshells supply calcium, and the beneficial microbes that break down organic material in your compost pile will work faster and better if you put a little calcium in their diet.