Myth Six: Pests are easy
to deal with organically half the time all you need to do is arm yourself with
a spray bottle of one teaspoon of oil, a bit of soap and some warm water.
Slug guns were not inventing to kill slugs with. But I want
one that is. Slugs are able to annihilate acres of seedlings in half the time
two goats and a marauding sheep can.
Then there’s the pear and cherry slug which can successfully
skeletonise small trees, and even if you get the cherries to fruition you’ve
got Turdus Merula, an apt a name as I’ve ever heard for what we commonly refer
to as the blackbird.
The cabbage moths and butterflies, the slow cancer of
those brassica hearts. Aphids, scale, parrots, mice, sparrows, the devils and
quolls who swipe those nappiless chooks right from their perch, the lice, the
worms, the ticks… it goes on. Please refer to Myths 1,2,3. By the time you’ve
figured it out the damage is done.
5 comments:
All very true. Today I have a precious day at home. Its cold and wet but I'm looking forward to baking bread from scratch, having a big pot of soup simmering on the wood heater and working in the vegie garden. And spending time with the various critters who share our life here - chooks, geese, dogs, cattle.
Have you heard of homeopathics for your plants? Its called Agrohomeopathy. Here is a book about it- Homoeopathy For Farm And Garden you can purchase it from http://homeopathyplus.com.au/books/ You might also find some useful info on the site. I haven't tried it myself, but use homeopathics for other things, and have heard it works really well.
I have one poor citrus (my precious blood orange) which for the past two years it's been planted, religiously eaten by butterfly caterpillars and then grasshoppers.
Bless the wee thing, it comes back every year with a new flush of growth, to feed the next season of pets. It looks like a stick in the ground most of the time, but it must be hardy because it hasn't died!
Its been a torment of whitefly this year. I even got mad enough to try a commercial spray on the one indoor plant - with a paint brush! (not good).
viv in nz
And the advice of those cheerful publications that suggest that predators should be entitled to a tithe of your garden produce... well, that's all well and good, but so far the pests in my yard aren't very good at calculating 10%..
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