I was asked this question over the weeekend, and the next thing was what do you spray those plants with? The short answer is, I don’t spray anything from the store.. but the long answer is more detailed.
As with most things in life, I think the everything is joined, and so some of my answers might seem a little “uh” to a few folks. so I believe that its up to a large part to the plants to do this work for me, I am will give a helping hand but mainly in ways that I believe will give the plants what they need to do it on their own as much as possable. So the first thing is working the soil, I make multiple critter compost, and work hard to create loose healthy soil, that rarely see’s the light of day, most of the time its under green cover, under bedding or under the light of the veggies.
- I wide row plant, now I do this for a couple reason, one its dry land planting spacing, I don’t water my plants other then to start them and only if they are dry that they are major in need. Giving the plants that extra space means that the plants grow bigger, stronger and therefor are able to withstand the bugs better, they also get better airflow around the whole plant. The big plants that are said to get one sqaure foot, get three in my wide row planting.
- I use straw or old hay to cover the ground between the plants, this helps retain moisture, suppress weeds and helps the plants be healthy plants, and healthy plants are less likely to be attacked then weak plants are. While they are still young now, by fall, these patch will be overflowing and the straw will not even be visable for the plant growth.
- Ducks, I like to run my light weight laying ducks thought the garden once or twice a week as natural pest control, unlike my chickens they are not as prone to snacking on fruits or leaves.
- Hand Picking, we still take out hot soapy water in a container and pick bugs off, and drop them in and put the lid on to kill them, its old school but effective.
- If its a true push come to show and I still can’t keep up with the different things above, then I will make up Rhubarb Leaf spray.. as you know, you can’t eat Rhubarb leaves and I find if you fill a bucket with a couple big ones and then pour water over top, let sit 24 hours, with the odd stir, then strain and into bottle and spray the plants, It will help only until your next rain, and remember to wash your veggies before using them, I would not use this on soft fruits like raspberries or strawberries.
So how do you deal with your bugs in a organic, natural way? Do you hand pick?
Just another Day on the Farm 
It has been a wet spring and summer so far.
I am over run with slugs and snails.
I use diatemacious earth, when it isnt raining…
I was told today to find some strips of sheep wool and put it around the plants cause snails and slugs dont like to crawl through it. Gotta find a sheep now…
Come meet the herd:
tailgait.blogspot.com
Interesting about the idea of strips of sheep wool, I have lots of that around here but I have never used it in the garden, I will have to give it a try and see if it has any effect.
The weather has been difficult for a great any of us this year when it comes to gardening that is for sure.
I usually use the search-pick-and-squish method, except for potato bugs because they pop too much (they go into soapy water) and tomato horn worms which get thrown out onto the road so I get the satisfaction of watching cars run over them. I spray all of my brassicas with Bt spray, works like a charm, and I have found that letting parsnips go to seed attracts tons (and I mean tons) of predatory wasps. Last year I let a whole row go and the only problem I had was with cucumber beetles, which apparently they don’t like. But I don’t mind squishing them. 🙂
That is very intesteing about letting the parsnips go to seed, I will let some do that this year and see if I get the same responds, thanks of the tip.
Way to funny on the throw them to the ground and let the cars run them over, the ducks would be sad if we did that to most of the bugs we collect, other then Potato’ bugs, most of the time, they get collected and dumped into the ducks an or chicken pen to be snapped up by the birds.
I love how we deal with slugs, I have a couple boards around the garden and you just lift them in the morning and flip them over and let the ducks go to town on the ones on the underside, the ducks consider them a treat, and will eat them all up, where as the chickens like the odd one or two, the ducks will make them a whole meal
So far (knock wood) the only pests we’ve had to worry about are the Tomato Hornworm which I either roll between two rocks or “put them out” underfoot like a cigarette butt and bloody-damned Earwigs which we encourage to hide in old sections of garden-hose and then give them the old soapy-water-bath. (It’s so lovely to watch them squirm; )
Morning Deb
I know just what you mean, its kind of sad that we can get so much pleasure from removing bugs and ending them.. my main battle this year has been ants, and not outside either but in the house, I have never had a worse year for big black ants in the house, If I could just figure out where they are getting in, or where the main nest is, they would so be blocked and having boiling water poured down holes but for now, the best I can do is the old icing suger/borax trick.
I love seeing how much straw you put down. Clearly I’m not doing enough! The visual is great.
Hi Green Bean
Welcome to the blog, and thanks for your comment, I am glad that it helped seeing how much I use, its a good thick amount, sure makes the weeds easy to pull out if they do get though. For rotating area’s, I tend to lay out sheet metal to cook the weed plants under them for a couple weeks, then dig in the compost and plant out and then put down six to eight inches of straw, which quickly compacts down to about four inches or so.