Managing Disease and Pests in the Garden

Many new gardeners start out confident that they will not use chemicals in their garden. Maybe you are one of them? While I applaud your ideals and respect your convictions, I'm going to offer some advice, a few cautions, and some options for compromise. Not because I believe it can't be done (it can), but because I think it's pretty hard to do while learning how to grow a garden. Especially if you've never grown a garden before.

First, let me say that I do prefer to use cheap and/or organic pest and disease control and soil amendments wherever it makes sense. There are a lot of low-or no-chemical pest and disease control options available. Sometimes, it's not even necessary to do anything. While diseases and pests do damage plants, it's not always dangerous to the plant or crop. Sometimes it's just unsightly or annoying.

I use sticky traps for some pests, pheromone traps for other pests, and purchase disease-resistant cultivars of fruits, nuts and berries and ornamentals where I can.

I use products like milky spore to disrupt the life cycle of pests, and floating row covers (or sheer curtains from the thrift store) to exclude pests. I use things like bone meal or calcium carbonate to prevent blossom end rot in tomatoes and peppers.

I will sometimes plant broccoli "too early", or plant squash "too late" to get around the active life cycle of cabbage moths and squash bugs.

I use utility panels (similar to utility panels) to protect some plants from the farm cats. In your research, don't forget to explore how to prevent damage from birds, deer, rabbits, raccoons, family pets etc.

Growing pest-repelling plants beside my ornamental and edible plants helps too. It's really the only reason I allow marigolds in my garden.

One of these days, I'm going to experiment with trap crops too.

One thing I won't do though, is make a bunch of extra work for myself in the name of chemical-free gardening. Don't even get me started on the advice to go around hand picking pests off my garden plants. I'm more likely to take up drinking coffee, and I loathe coffee.

That doesn't mean that I'll automatically use conventional garden chemicals at the first sign of a problem in the garden. I generally won't spend money on conventional garden chemicals, but I have 3 major exceptions to that rule.

The first exception is brand-new baby fruit trees. The evil Japanese beetles love to demolish the leaves of fruit trees, and also most of my favorite ornamentals. Since we don't harvest from our fruit trees until they are at least 5 years old, I will treat them for diseases and pests as needed for the first couple of years, to give them a chance to get established and become strong enough to survive the bugs. After that, I'll still treat for fungal diseases and prune them to ensure good air flow between branches, but for bugs, it's sticky traps or nothing.

The second exception is own-root roses. Since I pay a premium price for them, and I don't eat them, I give them a systemic fertilizer, anti-fungal and anti-pest treatment as needed.

The third exception is fire ants. They get the nuclear option. They have killed my trees, and when they bite, you learn why they're called fire ants.

Yes, in some cases, there are more organic treatments, but they tend to be less effective and/or require re-application after it rains. It rains a lot where I live. This is one place where lazy and effective trumps cheap and organic.

Whatever route you decide to go, it's a good idea to research what diseases and pests you're likely to encounter in your area, and ways to manage them. If you know what to expect, you can have a plan of attack in place so that if and when problems crop up, you're prepared to deal with them.

As you go along, it's also critical to write down when diseases and pests show up, which plants they attack, what weather conditions during the growing season may have exacerbated the problem, how you dealt with it, and whether your efforts were successful. You don't want to rely on the product or kitchen sink recipe that failed you this year, for next year's garden. When something does work well, you want to remember that for future reference and to share the information with other gardeners.