Get rid of Garden Bugs and Diseases

Lazy gardeners are willing to let a few bugs eat. “I simply plant too much,” says one gardener. “I give my crops rich soil and let them fend for themselves. There are all kinds of bugs, and I don’t have time to fool with them, so if they eat half my chard, I eat the other half.”

“Most gardeners panic when they see one bug eating,” says another gardener, who chides the “spray-happy people who rain destruction on a whole garden for one squash bug. I usually let them eat, and spray only when a crop is really threatened. ” Insect pests will eventually come into balance with their natural enemies, he suggests.

So encourage the population of beneficial creatures such as birds, bats, toads, snakes, spiders, ladybugs, and the praying mantis. They’ll eat lots of those pesky bugs, and you’ll have more time for summer fun.

There’s a gardener in a town near Toledo, Ohio, who has a mean tennis backhand. During garden season, he’s out there practicing it. His targets are those white butterflies that dance over the cabbages and other members of the cabbage family. Eventually, unless he swats them, they land, lay eggs, and from those eggs emerge the hungry cabbage loopers. One of those dainty butterflies can lay as many as 300 eggs, and 299 of them may hatch. There’s a better, less tiring way of halting the life cycle of those loopers. It’s called Bacillus thuringiensis, or BT; or commercially, Dipel, Biotrol, and Thuricide. It’s so effective that you can eat broccoli without wondering, and it’s pure enough even for Organic Gardening’s Robert Rodale. Spray about once a week during the early weeks of the season, or mix it in a watering can (one tablespoon to four gallons of water) and sprinkle on the plant. ‘fry it if you haven’t; you’ll never practice that backhand in the garden again — or use some of the less desirable sprays.

Get Tough with Slugs

Slugs — hazards in a mulched garden or in damp soil — especially love new seedlings. If you can’t say with aplomb, as does one lazy gardener, “There’s plenty for the slugs and me,” what can you do?

• Slugs can’t tolerate sharp or caustic materials against their
  soft bodies. Spread a half-inch deep, six-inch diameter circle of sharp sand around new seedlings, or try wood ashes, lime, cinders, or diatomaceous earth.
• Give them a beer party. One former school teacher pours beer into shallow dishes and spots them in her garden for slug bait.

• Feeling murderous? Stalk slugs in evening with a salt shaker. Sprinkle them twice for insurance. Or fill a spray bottle with a solution of half-water, half-vinegar and spray on slugs.
• Put shingles in the garden as traps. Each morning, lift the shingles and kill the slugs gathered there.

Cutworms and Other Annoyances

No lazy gardener wants to replace transplants severed at ground level by cutworms. Protect yours with collars pushed one inch into the ground. Make them from:

• tin cans with top and bottom removed,
• paper cups with bottoms punched out,
• sections of milk cartons,
• cardboard,

• a two-inch square of two thicknesses of newspaper placed around each stem.

That shovelful of compost thrown in a planting hole helps protect transplants against insect attack. If a transplant is put in poor soil, it develops more carbohydrates and less protein than normal. Insects crave carbohydrates so they flock to the poorly

Nourished plant.

Blossom end rot on tomatoes is caused by lack of calcium. If you’re sure there’s enough lime in your soil, it may be a lack of even moisture that is making the calcium unavailable to the plant. Prevent this by mulching and keep lots of organic matter in the soil.

Do you need the shade of a beach umbrella at the seashore to keep from scorching? Like you, tomatoes need protection from the sun. Be a little lazy and don’t prune them too severely. To prevent sunscald, they need those leaves to shade their fruit.

For a lazy gardener’s attack against root knot nematodes (most prevalent in the South), plant lots of French marigolds, whose roots exude a repellent, and keep the soil extra high in organic matter. Beneficial fungi that grow in decomposing humus keep these pests under control.

Hill earth over carrots to prevent a pesky fly from laying eggs in the top of the carrot root.

Let us have light — and scare away the aphids, which are accustomed to the cool, dark undersides of leaves. Spread a square of aluminum foil under affected plants. Supposedly, the aphids are confused by the increased light and leave. Do this around squash plants, too, to repel the squash bug. If you don’t get rid of the bugs, the foil will at least act as mulch to smother weeds and will bounce more light on crops that need much sun.

If green lacewings invade your garden, do nothing but welcome them. Their larvae are death to aphids.

Know and control your soil’s pH. Keep it sweet — almost at 7.0 — and you’ll discourage club root disease in cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, and the rest of the brassicas. Keep scab off potatoes with an acid soil — below 5, or an alkaline soil — 7 or above. Scab is worst when the pH is around 6.

Plant white radishes with cucumbers to deter cucumber beetles.

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