• September 5, 2009 - Natural Gardening

Gardening is always an opportunity for me to adjust my attitude and realize that life is a process and things don't have to be perfect. I can't do everything for one thing. Plus I have young children. I really can't do everything. I was hoping for a bumper crop of tomatoes and green beans and zucchini and broccoli this year. None of the above turned out. Several factors influence this I fear.

Lime

First off, we have extremely acidic soil here and naturally it's practically straight clay. We've amended it a lot. But, we have to constantly remember to amend it more. We skipped the lime this year and I think that was what was up with the green beans and several other crops which just didn't "take off".

Compost

Secondly, compost. Well, we get some compost from our cattle. But, we didn't get that ready early enough in the year. To prove my point, my husband dumped a large portion of what compost we had on the tomato beds. They are huge. Unfortuneately, I don't think they were warm enough - they haven't ripened yet and I'm not sure there is much hope at this point as the nighttime temperatures are dipping below 50 degrees F. Now, it's warmer in my greenhouse, but so far the tomato plants in there haven't fared any better. They only got small amounts of compost.

Pests

The other thing I've been fighting this year are pests. Slugs and grasshoppers to be specific. They ate every bit of the broccoli and a lot of my starts. Well, I really don't want to use a chemical solution for these things. I mean, I eat my produce, you know? Sometimes, when we have to we use certain chemical solutions such as spraying the Bull Thistles with Round Up. The round up goes to nothing in 72 hours anyhow and the Thistles are away from our garden and we keep the cows away from them after spraying. We also treat our cattle for flies. It's just in-humane not to after a certain point. That's also an "approved" organic choice in certain circumstances - not that we are officially organic.

Well, I want to avoid the chemicals, so I've been researching other options for these pests.

NATURAL SLUG TREATMENTS

FLOWER POT Prop a flower pot upside down with a stick to allow the slugs to get in. Check the pot toward the end of the day and remove the slugs.

BEER Place old plastic containers in the soil around damaged plants and fill with beer. Dump in the morning. Repeat every evening.

COFFEE GROUNDS Surround the damaged plants with coffee grounds. Slugs won't want to cross and you'll fertilize your soil.

COPPER Put copper flashing around your plants, it will shock and repel slugs.

VINEGAR Spray vinegar on slugs that aren't on your plants. It will kill them, just don't spay on your plants, it will kill those too.

Toads, rove beetles, lightning bugs, and ducks all eat slugs or their eggs.. I'm fresh out of the first three in the Northwest and somehow I think putting a duck in the garden would be a detriment to my garden, not just the slugs.

NATURAL GRASSHOPPER TREATMENTS

Chickens will eat grasshoppers if they have access to them. My problem is that our chickens don't have access to our garden or my greenhouse.

Sink glass jars into the soil. Fill to the halfway point wit a mixture of 10 parts water to 1 part of molasses. The hoppers are drawn to the sweet smell of the molasses, they dive in and drown. Clean traps as needed.

Black Strap Molasses: combine 4 ounces of this with one quart of water. Spray directly on hoppers. This will clog their pores so they cannot breath resulting in their death.

The other encouraging thing I read is that there are worms that eat grasshopper eggs and when grasshopper populations go up, then the worm populations go up and then eventually grasshopper egg populations go down.

Also, just a note in years past, we've dealt with other problems.

We've dealt with flea beetles on our tomatoes. I was happy to treat my tomatoes with a concoction made of garlic, hot peppers, onions that I sprayed on my fledgling tomatoes. It worked. It kept them off enough for the tomatoes to develop. And, funny thing is we haven't had a problem with those since.

Last year we had corn borer worms in our corn. We just cut off the ends of the corn and we put that end of the corn in our burn pile. It was a pain, but we didn't have a repeat with the corn this year.

It's cyclical and rather than killing off all bugs and creating super bugs and risking potentially harmful residues, I'd rather take the extra steps. Oh, I'll just have to learn that things don't have to be perfect.

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