Sustaining Your Backyard Ecosystem
Four Tips for Nontoxic Gardening
By Becky Lithander
Summertime is fast approaching, and vegetable gardens are growing lush. Tomato plants are already heavy with green fruits, promising tasty Caprese salads and pico de gallo in just weeks. The warm sun and long days of summer bring the most productive growing season of the year, but we are not the only ones showing up for the harvest.
Plant-eating pests are something every gardener has to contend with, and their numbers grow biggest in our summer vegetable gardens. Knowing a little about their natural enemies and nontoxic controls can ensure your garden remains safe and healthy for you and the planet. While there is much information available online or in books, these few simple tips can get you well on your way.
1. Keep them out! Building healthy soil, choosing appropriate plants for the conditions at your site, and maintaining proper soil moisture are key to growing healthy plants. It's also important to prune carefully and remove any diseased plant material from your site to avoid spreading pests or pathogens to healthy plants. Using physical barriers like floating row covers or root guards can protect young seedlings and newly transplanted trees and shrubs while they're most vulnerable.
2. Get to know your friends. The best tool for keeping damage to plants minimal is to invite natural enemies of plant-eating pests into the garden. Did you know that ladybugs eat aphids? And ladybugs are just one of dozens of types of insects that will come to your garden looking for aphids to eat. In fact, less than three percent of the insect species that exist are plant-eating pests. That means the rest are neutral or beneficial. To make sure you're inviting these important allies, include flowering plants in your garden year-round, especially those with large clusters of tiny flowers, like members of the dill family or the aster family.
3. Get to the bottom of it. Plant damage may not be an insect pest at all. If it is an insect, it's important to know what type. In some cases, insects will cause damage to plants only during a brief phase of their life cycle, and you won't need to address it further. In other cases, your plant may be healthy enough to fend for itself, and again, you don't need to do anything about it.
4. Take the toxic chemicals out of your garden. There are many nontoxic ways to manage pests in your garden. Sometimes a simple hard spray of the hose is all you need to wash away pests like aphids and keep your plant happy. You can also make simple insect repellents at home. If you choose to buy a product at the store, make sure it's nontoxic. Remember that nation's largest water quality problem is urban runoff, much of which comes from pesticides used by home gardeners. There are many nontoxic products available that will control pests without causing damage to our soil and waterways.
Using these easy steps will let you grow your gardens healthy and toxic-free. For more information on gardening without toxics and links to further resources, see our web page about Hope Gardens.
