- Mix up your plantings instead of planting large blocks of the same plant. It makes the pest work harder to get to all of your plants and the different smells and appearances can confuse the pest.
- Attract beneficial insects
- Plant native flowers and bushes.
- Plant fennel, mint, or dill and allow them to flower. Many parasitic insects (the good guys!) will feed on and hang out in these plants while looking for other insects to parasitize
- Quit using non-organic insecticides on your property and be thoughtful of when and how you apply organic pesticides.
- The easiest thing you can do is to allow some area near your garden to go "wild" by not mowing. This gives beneficial insects a place to shelter.
See the "wild" area behind our garden. This is also a wet marshy area that attracts frogs and toads.
- Attract toads and frogs
- They love water, so if a pond or wet area isn't near your garden you will need to provide it. A concrete bird bath top buried level with the ground works perfectly. Just keep it flushed out to avoid mosquitoes breeding in it.
- Provide shelter. Terracotta toad houses
can be purchased, but a 6" terracotta pot upside down with a 3-4" hole broken into the side works just as well. Place these around your garden in the most shaded areas.
- Plant things that repel pests
- Japanese beetles can devour a garden, but are repelled by onions and garlic. Guess what we plant around the edge of our beds?
- Marigolds and nasturtiums repel many beetles, worms, and nematoads. As a bonus, their flower petals and leaves are great additions to a salad.
- In addition to being great in the kitchen, basil repels flies and mosquitoes.
- Cover the bottom of your raised bed with 1/2" hardware cloth
- This will impede any burrowing pest (voles, gophers, rats, etc.) from dining on your plant's roots
In the next installment we will look at what to do if you did everything right (or didn't), but still are having problems.
Suggested Reading:
Great Garden Companions: A Companion-Planting System for a Beautiful, Chemical-Free Vegetable Garden
Posts
I'm interested in your raised beds made with cinder blocks. Right now I garden in a 120'x40' garden laid out in traditional rows. I want to convert to raised beds since I have clay soil, and I'm willing to invest in quality soil for my beds. Looks like your onions are doing great in the cinder block holes! How about the peppers? Are the beds 1 or 2 cinder blocks high?
ReplyDeleteWe will never go back to row gardening after growing square foot style in raised beds. Much less labor. If you have ANY Bermuda grass in the area that you are going to build these on, do yourself a favor and completely remove it before building your beds. Trust us.
ReplyDeleteOur beds are one block high (8"). When building them, we have found that dry concrete makes a great leveling medium under the blocks. It will also harden and lock the blocks together with just a light watering.
Peppers survive in the blocks, but do better in the center part of the bed because their root system needs more space than the block has. We have found onions, strawberries, basil, and mint to do well in the blocks.
One caveat about the blocks is that they dry out much faster than the center of the bed. So you will have to water them a little more frequently.
If you don't already have a copy, get one of Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening book. http://www.amazon.com/All-New-Square-Foot-Gardening/dp/1591862027/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1277348437&sr=1-1 We do some things differently than he does, but it still has a lot of good information in it.
Thanks for the reply!
ReplyDelete