The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook

Identify and Solve Common Pest Problems on Edible Plants - All Natural Solutions!

Susan Mulvihill

• Publisher: Cool Springs Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780760370070
• Topic: Sciences biologiques
• Subtopic: Horticulture

In The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, you'll find the simple, straightforward resources and tools you need to identify common pests of edible gardens and manage them without the use of synthetic chemical pesticides. Climate change and newly introduced insect pests are changing the world of gardening. Pests that once produced a single generation per year are now producing two or even three, and accidentally imported pest insects have no natural predators to keep them in check. These leaf-munching critters can cause significant damage in short order, reducing your yields and costing you time and money, especially if your garden is out of balance or your plants are stressed and vulnerable. Whether you're a new or seasoned gardener, author and garden pro Susan Mulvihill shows you how to handle pest issues by growing healthier plants, properly identifying the culprit, and nurturing the overall ecosystem of the garden. With easy-to-use charts, you'll learn how to identify common vegetable garden pests based on both the damage they cause and their physical appearance. DIY pest-control projects, coupled with up-to-date info on the best natural products, physical pest-control tricks, and tips for managing pests with the use of traps and barriers, all lead to a garden where beneficial insects and pollinators are preserved while pest populations are kept in check. Learn how to:

• Get rid of squash bugs with minimal effort
• Screen out root maggots
• Keep cutworms at bay
• Nurture the good bugs that help control tomato hornworms
• Tackle an infestation of mites, thrips, or whiteflies
• Send cucumber beetles packing
• Limit cabbage worms with a simple, inexpensive trick
• Learn about the best earth-friendly product controls for home vegetable gardeners

Identifying and controlling common vegetable garden pests has never been a favorite task of gardeners, but with Susan's help, positive results are easier than you think!

1	INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIC PEST MANAGEMENT IN THE VEGETABLE GARDEN

A bountiful harvest is the goal of vegetable gardeners everywhere.

Growing your own food is one of life’s greatest pleasures. The act of nurturing young seedlings, being out in the fresh air, harvesting that first vine-ripened tomato, and knowing you are putting healthy food on the table all combine to make it such a positive experience.

At least, it is until that first time you head into the garden and discover holes in the broccoli leaves or the biggest caterpillar you’ve ever seen nibbling on your tomato crop. Those aren’t exactly positive experiences, are they?

Whether you are a seasoned gardener or a beginner, you know insects and other bugs, such as spider mites, will be one aspect of growing a garden. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All kinds of bugs—both the good and the bad—play important roles in a healthy environment.

Before we proceed, a clarification is in order. In this book, I’ll discuss insects, spiders and spider mites (which are arachnids), pillbugs and sowbugs (crustaceans), and slugs and snails (mollusks). Within the animal kingdom, insects, arachnids, and crustaceans are all classes of arthropods. To be an arthropod, an animal must have a segmented body, jointed appendages, and an exoskeleton, and also lack a backbone (invertebrate). That’s pretty confusing, isn’t it? My goal is to keep the information simple and relatable. Since we all refer to these creatures as bugs and insects, that is exactly what I’m going to do in this text!

Humans have identified approximately 1 million insect species on our planet. If that freaks you out, take comfort in knowing that only about 1 percent of those species are pests to us. That puts things in a whole new perspective, doesn’t it? Or, at least, I hope it does.

The remaining species—approximately 990,000—are either beneficial or benign. Beneficials—bugs that include lacewings, ladybugs, ground beetles, and yes, even spiders—spend their days munching on aphids, insect eggs, cutworms, and so many other problematic pests. Other beneficials pollinate the flowers of edible or ornamental plants. You’ll meet these and many more here. Get to know them as your partners in creating a healthy ecosystem in your garden.

Benign species, while they aren’t particularly helpful in controlling pests, don’t bother humans or the crops we grow in our gardens or on farms. Many of them perform a critical role, feeding on decomposing plant material and building and aerating the soil in the process.

Myriad species of bugs contribute to the balance of our planet’s various, complex ecosystems. In our gardens, beneficials keep the pests from taking over and making the act of growing our food just about impossible, the benigns help keep the soil alive, and the pests feed the beneficials. If you let them, and even help them by how you garden, beneficials and benigns can extend that environmental balance to your garden by managing pests and improving your soil.

As you read this book and learn to embrace and enhance your environment in order to be a successful gardener, it is my hope you will also discover that the world of bugs is really cool. This guide will increase your awareness of what’s out there, help you figure out which ones might be causing problems, and choose the most environmentally friendly ways to resolve those problems. We gardeners have plenty of options!

WHAT IS ORGANIC GARDENING AND WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT?

We’ve all heard the term “organic gardening,” yet it often has different interpretations. Put simply, it means gardening without the use of chemicals. In this context, chemicals are synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or insecticides (pesticides) made in a lab to mimic or try to improve upon those found in nature.

But organic gardening also involves maintaining soil health, regularly monitoring the garden for potential problems, and understanding and using the role insects and other bugs play in the environment. The many organic vegetable gardens I have visited in the US and Europe demonstrated to me that this method can be both beautiful and productive. What I observed has pushed me to embrace organic methods in my own garden for many years with excellent results. If you are interested in growing healthy produce for yourself, your family, neighbors, and community, chemicals need not play a role in the process.

FERTILIZERS

Synthetic (inorganic) fertilizers provide a quick fix for struggling plants and lawns but kill the microorganisms that make nutrients available to the roots of plants. Their nitrogen and phosphorous levels typically exceed the needs of the plants to which they are applied. Irrigation and rainfall wash that excess away to contaminate our rivers, lakes, and ground water. In contrast, organic fertilizers contain lower but more diverse concentrations of nutrients. Plants more readily absorb them and the nutrients improve the soil.

HERBICIDES

While weeding isn’t a whole lot of fun, using synthetic chemicals to get rid of them can do more harm in the long run. Manufactured herbicides often last longer on plant material and in the soil than we realize, affecting the quality and safety of our gardens. Planting in soil treated with a broad-spectrum weed killer can make your new plants sick, and the residual herbicide may kill them. I like to use grass clippings to mulch my vegetable garden. However, if I used herbicides on my lawn—to kill dandelions or other broadleaf weeds—those lawn clippings could potentially wipe out the majority of the plants. Why? Most vegetable plants are broadleaf plants!

INSECTICIDES

For a long time, we gardeners have been encouraged to spray for bugs “just in case,” meaning whether or not those bugs are present. But insecticides are some of the most problematic chemicals—for both our food and the environment—used in gardening.

United States law requires the label of every insecticide, organic or synthetic, to include that product’s ingredients and recommended safety precautions—how to apply it, whether it is safe around children and pets, how long to wait before harvesting and eating the produce protected by the insecticide, how to dispose of the product, and so on. Having this knowledge is for the consumer’s protection, yet I worry about the potential effects of long-term use.

Growing a healthy, productive garden is a joyful experience.

Insecticides are short-term solutions. Some pests in a given population will survive being poisoned, living to pass their resistance to their offspring. Even if you kill all the insects in your garden, more will arrive to take up residence. But pest species are not the only ones you should consider.

Help keep beneficial insects, including pollinators such as bees, safe by avoiding the use of chemical pesticides.

Many pesticides are non-selective poisons that kill pests, benign species, and beneficial species indiscriminately. Some of these species lost to “friendly fire” may have even solved your pest problem for you. Even birds and other ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Introduction to Organic Pest Management in the Vegetable Garden
• 2 Meet the Bugs
• 3 Organic Pest Management Products and Diy Pest Controls
• Resources
• Product Suppliers
• Bug Mugshot Gallery
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• Copyright