In the first article , we talked about cultural controls or basically modifying our approach to gardening through practices that help minimize the chance for disease. Cultural controls include choosing disease-resistant plants, providing healthy and appropriate growing conditions for our plants, removing diseased or damaged branches or plants, keeping our tools disease-free by cleaning them with a 10% bleach solution, rotating crops and utilizing garden mulch to minimize the ability of disease to migrate from the soil to the plant. Last week, we talked about biological control methods such as using good bugs to defend against the bad bugs.
Yes, I know, calling them “bad” bugs is a little harsh, but if they are eating my tomatoes, they are officially on my bad bug list. The biological control strategy include adding lady beetles to our gardens to help when we have aphid problems. In addition, it’s good to have a variety of healthy, blooming plants in our landscape to attract a variety of insects so that we have more good bugs to naturally take care of the less than desirable bugs.
And last but not least, it’s a benefit to make our landscape bird-friendly, since birds love to eat caterpillars. Now for the final two strategies, which include mechanical/physical and chemical controls. Mechanical/physical control This is pretty much what it sounds like.
It’s old school in a variety of ways. For example, suppose you have an insect dining on your vegetable plants. You can .