Pests can ruin your vegetable crop, but they can be controlled if caught early enough. Here is an excerpt from From Seed to Table on dealing with them while still remaining as organic as possible.
The definitions on organic gardening differ. At its most basic level, it means gardening with native plants, using natural fertilizers and pesticides, with the addition of composted materials. I’m not going to label our gardening efforts as organic, even though we might qualify under some of the more loosely interpreted definitions. We plant vegetables that are well suited to the environment where we live. We prepare the soil using organic materials, such as compost and mushroom manure/compost, supplemented with sand to help loosen the clay loam, such as what we had in western Pennsylvania. However, we do use Miracle Gro® on our seedling plants to help them grow faster and stronger, but we do not apply Miracle Gro® on the garden. For pesticides, we use natural concentrates including rotenone—if available—pyrethrins, spinosyn A and D, found in Captain Jack’s Deadbug Neem® oil concentrate, and bacillus thuringienis (BT) for general purpose caterpillar control. These natural, organic products are diluted with warm water according to instructions that come with the concentrates. We spray the cole family of plants and beans every two weeks or as needed, based on damage from cabbageworms or bean beetles. We don’t pick those vegetables until at least a week after spraying. All of these natural pesticides break down quickly after a couple of days in sunlight. Rains will wash them off, so it should be reapplied after a substantial rainstorm.
Here’s a chart to help determine what types of pesticide work well for individual vegetables.
|
VEGETABLES |
PEST |
CONTROL |
| Beans – bush and pole (green, yellow, purple), lima and butter beans | Bean beetles, caterpillars, aphids, white fly, stink bugs, leaf miners | Pyrithins, Neem oil, Captain Jack’s Deadbug (spinosyn A & D)
|
| Tomatoes – all kinds and colors | Hornworm, aphids, white fly, stink bugs, fungi (early and late blights, powdery mildew), leaf miners
|
Pyrithins, Neem oil, spinosyn A & D, except for fungi use copper octanoate concentrate (copper soap), or mancozeb (manganese and flowable zinc concentrate
|
| Peppers – sweet and hot | Stink bugs – white yellow blemishes on pepper | Pyrithins, Neem oil, spinosyn A & D
|
| Cole family – cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, kale, collards, turnips, rutabagas, kohlrabi
|
Cabbage worm or moth | Pyrithins, Neem oil, spinosyn A & D, or BT |
| Cucumbers – all sizes | Cucumber beetles, aphids, white fly, fungi on leaves
|
Same as tomatoes |
| Squash – summer/winter | Squash bugs | Same as peppers |
| Spinach | Leaf miners | Same as peppers |
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