The best pest management strategy? Know your pests
One of the best ways to fight a pest infestation is to keep a close watch on your plants, and study pest patterns.
Nobody wants to share the fruits of their labor with bugs. You can deal with them by spraying organic pesticides, setting traps, and picking off bugs. You can also cultivate a healthy, diverse set of plants, which helps resist pests. But another way to manage pests is to match your strategy to your pests.
Some perennials are susceptible to the same pests each season, for instance. I always know that leaf miners will find my sorrel and aphids will seek comfort and shade in my currant bushes. So I pretreat and pay special attention to those areas every year to keep them from coming back. I also walk my garden a few times a week searching for unwanted bugs. If I notice five aphids on my radicchio, I brush them off, problem solved. Left unnoticed, those five aphids can explode into a community of hundreds.
LEARN FROM YOUR GARDEN
Scan your plants. A quick way to zero in on any pest problem is to simply scan your perennials. If any jump out as looking unhealthy, investigate. Signs your plants may be under siege include dead areas, wilted or discolored leaves, unusual growth, and lack of fruit. Once you pinpoint your unhealthy plants, turn over the leaves, stems, buds, and shoots to look for the culprit. If I find bugs I usually either pick them off and squash them, or spray them with soapy water.
Trap pests in glue. Another way to learn more about the bugs in your yard is to use sticky traps. These are blue, red, or yellow paper traps with a strong adhesive coating. Bugs are attracted to the bright colors and fly right into the glue. Checking sticky traps a few times a week yields lots of useful information. If I see a dozen cabbage moths, for instance, I know I need to treat my broccoli with Bt to kill off any hatching cabbage loopers before they have a chance to feast.
Not all bugs are bad! Lady bugs are among the many insects that are your friends in the field.
Evaluate the results. Consider your pest management tactics experimental until you know they work. After treating your plants wait a day or two and then inspect them. Look to see if there are any dead bugs or smaller colonies. It's also possible the damage may have worsened. If there's no change, or things are worse, it's obviously time to try something else.
Learn to love ugly fruits and vegetables, or at least accept them. Once you’ve identified the bad bugs, decide what level of harm is acceptable. Do you need picture perfect berries or are you okay with eating greens with a few holes in them? Learning to live with less-than-perfect produce can help lighten your pest management burden, and make gardening a whole lot more fun.
Acadia Tucker is an author, climate activist, and regenerative farmer in Maine. Her books include Growing Perennial Foods: A field guide to raising resilient herbs, fruits, and vegetables, Growing Good Food: A citizen's guide to climate victory gardening, and Tiny Victory Gardens: Growing good food without a yard.