First garden..need help with pests!!! PLEASE?

mjbrowne

Hello, all. I'm so glad I found this group. While we live in the middle of town, my husband hunts and we eat mostly deer. I used what little space I had behind my shed to make a garden this year. I about cried with excitement when we harvested our first tomato this week. After our kids our older, we plan on moving out a little and becoming more self-sufficient. I would LOVE to have chickens and a bigger garden.

I've noticed holes in my first pepper (I'm upset becuase the pepper is ruined!) and in most of the leaves on my sweet basil plant. I found one small green worm-looking-thing in the plant. We do not want to use chemicals around our edibles (or anywhere). How do I control grubs, insects, etc and prevent them from eating my veggies?!?!

(I live in Southeast Missouri..but not sure that makes a difference?)

THANKS SO MUCH!

SyntonicGarden

Not 100% sure if it'll help, but I do two things to keep my cucumbers from getting eaten. I save my egg shells, crush them, and sprinkle them around my plants. Makes it harder for slugs and the like to navigate through to my plants. The other thing that I found helpful was to boil a cup of water, crush a few cloves of garlic and make a garlic tea. After it brewed for a bit, I let it cool, strained it through a coffee filter, and put it in a spray bottle that I kept in my fridge. I used it on my plants to keep bugs at bay and it seemed to help with white mold on my zucchini leaves.

There may also be other plants that you can use to prevent pests. I vaguely remember being told that marigolds help keep bugs off of tomatoes. Not sure how true that is, but I've always planted them near each other.

bewitchinglife

I can't keep any food plant alive except for fruit trees. So no suggestions from me.

Good luck though. I hope your thumb is greener than mine.

mjbrowne

Thank you! I have been keeping my egg shells, coffee grinds, and fruit rinds to make a rough "compost" type to sprinkle on my beds. I do have parsly and basil planted in front and back..it's kept the mosquitos away wonderfully!

SyntonicGarden

The guy from the local feed and grain store also gave these gems.

- put a foil pie tin in the garden so that the edge of it is level with the ground. Fill it with stale beer. The slugs will come for the beer and drown in it. (sad. gross, but it works)

- garden snails / slugs (culprits of hole) don't like copper. So if you have any old copper wire hanging out, run it around the perimeter of the garden, on the ground. Either the slugs won't cross over it or they'll die trying.

- epsom salt - not regular table salt! but epsom salts (come in a cardboard milk container) are good for the garden. They return nutrients to the soil, will get absorbed and perk up yellow leaves on a tomato plant, and will keep some pests away. Sprinkle a small amout around (not on) the plants and water. Slugs hate salt.

Another thing that I started doing is upside down gardening by using hanging flower pots like those tupsy turvey planters. (If you're interested, send me a private message so I remember to share the link) I got the idea after reading something on Punk Domestics. Their site and FB page is AMAZING!

Pandorian

Got one of those topsy turvey style planters going right now, figured at $2 each at the so-called "dollar store" they were worth trying, seems to be working great so far, though the plant does want to grow as they would normally rather than hanging down, anticipating some problems with the produce weighing the stem down.