Over in our Skool community, Laurie asks:
Do you treat your row gardens any differently than your GRG? I am trying to decide if I really want to go out with a flashlight before dawn to look for squash bugs, although I need to at least once to really see what they and their eggs look like. Perhaps I just haven’t had a real problem with them yet. We have enough brush and debris for bugs and birds to live, and I see lots of butterflies and bees.
It depends on how bad we need the production, and how bad the pest problems are.
During the 2020 pandemic, we vigilantly defended our crops from pests because we wanted to make sure we had lots of food. When you open up a new space and plant some rows, it’s usually going to come under attack by pests. If you really need that food, you may have to fight for it.
A tilled row garden is not at all close to a natural ecosystem so the proper balance of predators and pests isn’t in play. You’ll probably have to “play God” more than you would in a permaculture system. And if that means going out with a flashlight or baiting slugs with dishes of beer or spraying leaves with something or other, that may just be what has to be done.
We are rather lazy about our gardening. We love to build big, beautiful systems that don’t require fiddly maintenance; hence the evolution from small beds of annuals to large, mixed polycultures.
A lot goes into keeping pest damage low, from polycultures (as in my last video) to nutrition and watering, to planting the right crops for your area. We have some crops that never get hurt by pests (true yams, cucuzza squash, cassava), and others that attract them at plague levels (broccoli and cabbage, lettuce, bush beans).
Over the years we’ve moved towards planting the pest-resistant crops in large collections of perennials and annuals, on top of compost, ash, manure and biochar-amended soil, then letting nature sort out what does well and what doesn’t.
Go thee forth and hunt those squash bugs!
Come join us on Skool for gardening help – and our food forest course!
2 comments
I’ve definitely noticed in a polyculture system pests really aren’t much an issue usually. I have so much diversity in the yard in general I usually don’t have many major issues. I only intervene if I direly feel I need to save something important if the pests are bad enough. Otherwise I always let nature sort things out. I rare have the yard well mowed or anything so that helps keep predators around. My wife doesn’t necessarily appreciate that living in snake country but it’s a non issue to me. I’m a snake catching guy so that’s the least of my worries. I relocated venomous stuff so my kids or animals don’t get bit but I encourage others to be here. I’ve let go tons of rat snakes in the yard to help with rats and mice. The chicken feed, compost piles, and whatnot definitely make this a suitable place for rodents. Is what it is but any help I can get from nature I surely welcome.
Anyways very beautiful gardens you got going. Wish mine were in better order. This year has been way too busy to make things happen. Everything looks bad around here right now. Doing markets every weekend and working for others just hasn’t lent me the time to keep up. Trying to get to where I don’t need money beyond our nursery so I can better manage things. On the pinnacle of that at the moment and hope by the end of this summer we’ll be there. Still working for another nursery and as a bee keeper at the moment to make financial life easier. It’s taking a toll on our personal gardens and ourselves though. Could use some prayers on delivering us from the need for the extra income. I see God at work getting us there but feels like he’s trying to build my character by the struggle to get there though. It’s amazing how real you can see that when you know how to look for it. Everything happens at the flow of God’s graces undeniably.
I will pray for you, Derek. I feel the same way sometimes. I wish I could go back to landscape painting on occasion, but can’t get free. If it wasn’t for the need to keep my gardens nice for YT, I’d probably be scrambling to find income elsewhere too. Life has gotten quite expensive. But God has it.