Earth-Safe Sprays that Rappel Bugs

Garden work is hard work. No question. Digging up grass to plant trees and develop veggie plots is now on my list of things I least like to do. It’s also on the list of the job that does not end. To help get me through the endless digging, I envision eating copious amounts of arugula and tomatoes, the end result of all this digging. But as I dig, I encounter the bugs and slugs that will also enjoy my arugula and tomatoes, certainly as much as I will.

Getting Tough with the Bugs
The minds of the twentieth century got us thinking that zapping ‘pests’ with poison was the magic bullet to safeguard crops. The reality is that during that time pesticides have offered short term gain with long-term pain.

Poisons do not discriminate between beneficial bugs and predatory bugs. They also kill off birds and worms, key players when it comes to the ecosystem, particularly edible plants.

The problem is that humans have replaced sustainable agriculture - a partnership with nature - with chemicals that nature has never seen. How effective are pesticides? According to Greenpeace, between 1940 and 1990, Americans increased pesticide use by 3000 percent and pesticide potency by 1000 percent. In 1940, the US lost 31 percent of its crops to insects, compared to 37 percent in 1990. Companies with pesticides to sell tell us their products are essential. I think we are all being sold a bill of goods.

Removing Uninvited Guests
If you have a plethora of veggie loving bugs, it could be a sign that something is amiss with your garden’s ecology. I refer to The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference and Marjorie Harris’ Ecological Gardening to guide me in what plants to place together to repel unwanted creatures and attract good insects to eat the ones that eat my food. Marigolds are particularly effective at rappelling and even killing a number of pesky bugs.

Non-Poisonous Sprays and Alternatives
No matter what you do, however, you will get the odd bug munching on your greens. It’s important to keep an eye on your crops. If your lettuce starts to resemble Swiss cheese, there are recommended sprays and alternatives that will not harm you, your plants or the soil.

• Create a diversion – or trap. Slice up apples, potatoes, cabbage or lettuce and place where you are having slug or bug trouble. Once you get them munching on your bait, pick them off and destroy them quickly by stomping on them. No salt please. That’s cruel.
• I tried the garlic spray last year, but it’s very stinky and cumbersome to prepare. According to Marjorie Harris, Canada’s gardening guru, the most effective general spray is also very easy to make – and not stinky. Mix 1 teaspoon of Ivory soap (nothing with a detergent in it) into ½ litre of water. If you see a bug on your plant, blast them with it.
• Ruth in my office swears by her turmeric mixture (1 tablespoon turmeric to four cups of water). She sprinkles it along the border of her beds once a month. Works like a charm, she says.
• Marjorie Harris’ Ecological Gardening makes other suggestions that are focused on particular pests. Her book is a great resource. I highly recommend it.
• Avoid spraying during blossoming season or on a windy day. Spray in the evening when there are no bees. You don’t want to hurt these essential pollinators. You also don’t want to tick them off.

In the News

Did you hear? The province of Ontario passed a law where homeowners have to have an energy audit when selling their home. For more, click here.

The not-so-green side of gardening waste
Where to recycle your plastic pots

Meet Canada's climate point man

Homeowners can soon manage power use, Google says

Paul Hawkin’s Commencement address in Portland
http://www.charityfocus.org/blog/view.php?id=2077

Best Defense for the Garden – Your Brain

It’s official. Ontario is banning the use of cosmetic pesticides. Premier McGuinty made the announcement yesterday, his Earth Day gift to the province. It’s particularly encouraging to us folks who want to grow organic veggies in our backyards. How can a garden be truly organic when your neighbour is spraying the nasty stuff on his prize tomatoes?

The problem with pesticides is that the poison magnifies as it works its way up the food chain, disrupting the ecosystem. Insects become more resistant to the pesticides every year. And pesticides are a petroleum product - another reason we don’t like them.

Like many, Jane and I are busily preparing our toxic-free garden. We’re really just learning as we go. Last year, we discovered that soil makes a big difference in the quality of the vegetables. Go figure, eh. In the fall, we spruced up the garden patch with a proper cocktail of manure, topsoil and compost. We also used straw as mulch to help with water retention. We’re now mixing in more compost and top soil, and will sprinkle in some fertilizer that we bought from Grassroots.

This weekend or the next, we will till the soil – no more than six inches. We don’t want to cut up earthworms which are very important players in the garden – aerating and fertilizing being high on the list.

Then we will plant seeds. Jane and I came up with an assortment of our favourite veggies. I’m in the process of charting out where to place the seeds. We must be careful. Some veggies are very unhappy if they grow near a particular type of vegetable. The potato and spinach, for example, silently endure one another. The tension is terrible. Others, such as tomato and basil, are great chums. They flourish in once another’s company. A companion veggie may repel insects that want to feast on the other. It’s a matter of knowing what plants work best together to prevent insects from feasting on your vegetables. Who needs pesticides? A brain works much better.

So with our copy of The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference, we are charting out a veggie map on what goes where, complete with sun images to indicate which ones like sun the most. We’re very accommodating. We don’t like unhappy drooping vegetables.

Other tips: marigolds repel many pests so plant them in and around the garden. Rose bushes indicate the health of the soil. If the roses are looking unhappy, the soil needs some work.

In the News

While folks celebrated Earth Day, some news was far from celebratory. Economist Lord Stern realized that the problem of climate change is much worse than he originally estimated, and scientists announced evidence of methane stores in Siberia thawing and releasing into the atmosphere.

As if in response, Michael Pollen wonders ‘why bother’ in this week’s New York Times Magazine. He concludes that we can’t wait around for politicians or companies to change our lifestyles. It’s up to us. No one exemplifies this more than Wangari Maathai who started the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. I just saw a documentary featuring her at the Toronto Hot Docs Festival - Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai. She argues, and backs it up with experience, that it is only when the people take action and stay on course that they make a difference and affect government change. If you’re ever feeling depressed or wonder ‘why bother’, I recommend that you google Wangari Maathai and let her inspire you.

Gardening like a Pro

After spending what seemed like hundreds of days scraping old caulking from the exterior of my house, and then (happy day) finally caulking, I am ready to prepare the garden for next season.

Whether you have a garden patch, envision one in the sea of grass in your backyard or can accommodate pots on a porch, growing your own herbs and veggies is a great way to connect to your food and get as local as possible.

Jane and I took advantage of our generous backyard, growing our own veggies this year. The bit of compost and natural fertilizer we doused on the soil did very little to revive it from its sickly clay-ridden state. I can tell you, radishes will grow in just about anything. This I learned. Everything else either didn’t take shape or was puny and pale.

The Fall Prep
Jane and Cheryl’s Veggie Patch 2008 is going to be a garden to die for – thanks to sound advice from our next door neighbour, who sells vegetables from his backyard garden, that guy in the booth next to mine in the conference I attended in Winnipeg and Sarah, the City garden advisor who gave us tips on making a lawn and garden water resistant.

And it all starts now! This is what we learned and what we are about to do:

Aerate the lawn – To give our lawn a breath of fresh air, we are aerating it. How? By fastening spiky aerating sandals to our boots and clomping over our lawn. Not only does this slow plodding process allow water, oxygen and fertilizer to reach the roots, it provides somewhat interesting video footage. We bought our sandals at Lee Valley. You can also use a pitchfork or foot-press aerator. For larger lawns, most garden centres rent or sell aerating machines.

Fertilizer and Soil Upgrade – Our soil needs a major overhaul so we’re going to gut the vegetable patch. We’ll dig down a few inches and deposit the clay in paper garden bags for the City to pick up. Once we do that pleasant job, we’ll mix top soil that we bought from Canadian Tire, compost, manure and the left over peat moss from the people who lived in our house before us. Please note that peat moss is a non-renewable resource so please avoid buying it.

We were advised to mix in manure in the fall. Applying it in the spring before we plant will ‘burn’ the seeds.

The lawn needs soil spa too. We will sprinkle top soil, manure and compost on our lawn to enrich the soil

Straw/Mulch – This weekend we have a date with Canadian Tire to pick up lots of straw, destined for our veggie patch and lawn. The straw will disintegrate into the ground and act as a binder, helping to retain water in our soil. We will store the excess straw in our shed and lay it down in the spring before planting. Any weeds lurking in the straw will die off during the winter. The stored straw will be nicely decomposed and yucky for application in the spring. Can’t wait!

Seeding – We will over-seed the lawn with drought-friendly rye and fescue grass, avoiding the thirsty Kentucky Blue grass. I bought the rye and fescue at the Grassroots store.

Lawn Mowing – We will raise the non-motorized mower 3” high to avoid cutting the grass too close, making it difficult for the lawn to retain its moisture.

For other tips on minimizing the need to water your lawn, click here. If you live in a house in Toronto and have a lawn, contact the City to schedule a garden advisor to visit you during the spring. This free service will show you what to do for your lawn and garden to reduce watering. If you live in another city, contact your local government to inquire if they too offer such a service. We found it most illuminating.

Happenings
Global Climate Campaign
Rally Across the World for December 8, the International Day of Climate
Action!

Planet in Focus International Environmental Film & Video Festival (October 24 – 28)

Green at Cube (to October 28)
Echo-focused art at the Cube art gallery in Toronto

In the News

Warmer seas spark extinction worries – Toronto Star


Other News

BBC – The Greenroom

Ecoshock Radio

Green Bloggers

Grist Magazine

Monbiot

My Green Element

New York Times – Environment

StopGlobalWarming.org

Tree Hugger

Zerofootprint Blog

Learning from the Master

Jane and I are on the threshold of becoming organic gardeners. Given that lately we have precious little time on our hands, this foray into organic do-it-yourself gardening seems quite daunting and, well, miraculous. Little by little we are getting our garden in shape without a whiff from our toxic friend, the pesticide.

Once upon a time we humans saw ourselves pitted against nature, a formidable foe that we vanquished with synthetic chemicals, artificial flavouring and botox. Ok, we’re still there. But times they are a changing. For a report on organic produce’s increasing popularity, click here.

It’s time we made peace with our arch nemesis and give it the respect it deserves. And what better way to begin than by starting your own organic garden.

Organic gardens take time and lots and lots of patience and will. Expect trial and error. Expect mistakes and always always expect spots on the apples. It’s all about strategy because really, you’re learning to nurture a little eco-system. This weekend Jane and I start planting. With carrots and beets, we will be sure to plant onions to repel the carrot rust fly and aphids, etc., etc. I think you get the idea.

When you use pesticides, which were developed during the war as potential chemical weapons, you are replacing the birds, worms and beneficial insects with chemicals that may offer a quick fix but in the long run require increasingly stronger dosages, kill beneficial creatures and poison the land.

Tanya Denckla in her book The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference equates pesticides with crack cocaine. You’re on it for the quick fix – the buzz and once you’re on it, it’s hard to get off. It may feel good at the beginning but it becomes extremely damaging.

Tanya provides some interesting stats on pesticides that she took from a 1991 Greenpeace report:

• US pesticide use increased by 3000% since 1940
• Pesticide potency in the US increased by 1000% since 1940
• The US lost 31% of its crops to insects in 1940
• In 1991, the US lost 37% of its crops to insects
• Sweden reduced its pesticide use by 50% between 1985 and 1990
• There was no decline in crop yields in Sweden during that time

The moral of this story: we should all replace pesticides with our brains. Let’s be smart farmers, not pesticide addicts.

I’m just getting into it but The Organic Gardener’s Home Reference is proving to be a great resource.

In the News

Billions of Dollars Pledged to Cut Urban Energy Use
Clinton invests in energy efficiency in major cities – including Toronto.

Scientists Back Off Theory of a Colder Europe in a Warming World
We can all breathe a sigh of relief that Europe may not freeze due to global warming after all. It’s just going to get warmer. Fabulous!

Incredible Shrinking Packages
Major companies take the lead in reducing packaging with plans for zero waste. They’re catching on to the idea that reduced packaging and zero waste is profitable.

Other News

Green Bloggers

Ecoshock Radio

Grist Magazine

Tree Hugger

Zerofootprint Blog

StopGlobalWarming.org

BBC – The Greenroom

New York Times – Environment