Is Your Garden a Bug Magnet?
Saturday July 18, 2009
Scent is such a sneaky sense. One minute I’m not the least bit hungry and the next I’m getting a whiff of something so tempting I can’t resist a pit stop at the bakery. I know this and I should know enough to avoid walking by bakeries, but I don’t. Does this apply to insects too? Do caterpillars and beetles find a particular plant so enticing they just can’t pass it up? About’s Guide to Insects, Debbie Hadley, tackles the question of How Plant-Eating Insects Find the Right Food - a first step in how to prevent it in your garden.
Photo: © Marie Iannotti
Comments
Prevent it? How typically misguided. You need to read Douglas Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home” Insects need to eat too- they are part of the web of life helping to provide food for birds and other organisms and pollinating the plants that provide our food.
As much as I enjoy being labeled “typically misguided”, at no point did Debbie or I promote the idea of eliminating all the insects in our gardens. However a major tenant of IPM is knowing which insects are being destructive in your garden and why you are attracting so many of them.
I agree that insects are a vital part of our ecosystem, but please don’t be so quick to judge people who are trying to find a balanced way of coexisting. Let’s not forget that many garden insect problems are man-made and, left unchecked, there could be very little garden left for the other insects to enjoy.
My garden is a favorite spot for european cabbage worm moth and chard leaf miner.
Until this year my brassicas I’ve battled the moths’ worms by picking them off my nibbled plants. This year I put up hoop houses with plastic and now (in the heat) floating row cover. The moths definitely know where their food is; they flock to the hoop house. But, they can’t get in & I have beautiful, nibble-free cabbage, kale, cauliflower & broccoli to show for it.
I did have my chard under floating row cover as well until several weeks ago. I experimented, removing the cover, to see if my plants would be okay, exposed, until a late season second hatch. Unfortunately, the flies got to the plants immediately, and I’m working around some worm-riddled leaves now.
It’s definitely a toss up — look at the beautiful plants in my garden as they grow (and are devoured by pests) or hide them under cloth and enjoy their pest-free state when I eat them. It is kind of funny, I can enjoy “the white butterflies” in my garden now that they can’t raise families in my crops!
To Gardenmentor, I like your idea of hoops with plastic, how do they work, do you put the hoops over your cabbage, broccoli etc? do you provide special plants for the worms? or bad insects.?
Thanks for your idea. Have a great day!
I agree, the hoop idea is great. Blocking them saves so many headaches.