If you are going to go the organic route in kitchen gardening, sooner or later you will find yourself thinking about insect management. We try to take the attitude that having a healthy garden is having a healthy ecosystem in our yard, one that will attract birds and bees and other living things. One of the important lessons I learned came from reading The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control edited by Editors Barbara W. Ellis and Fern Marshall Bradley, a book we’ve mentioned previously here. What I learned was this: not all insects are bad. Some of the insects you might see in your garden are actually there for the express purpose of eating the insects you don’t want. How great is that? This book has helped me to recognize ladybug larvae, which are no where near as cute as grown-up ladybugs.
from http://berkeleynaturally.wordpress.com/
Deciding to eliminate insects based on some cute-ness factor is a setting a course for disaster… and a lot of squishing.
There are some insects that I’ve learned to identify and to handpick off of our plants. I’m not alarmed when I see a few insects here and there, but when the number of insects nibbling on a plant is too high, it’s time for action.
Jim is very hardy when it comes to squishing insects. I am not. I just can’t do it efficiently. So I’ve adopted a technique that I’d like to share with you here.
I take a quart-sized container of water with a drop of dish soap (to break the surface tension on the water) out to the garden with me. When I see an insect nibbling on a leaf or stalk, I put the container below the insect and bring my other hand down from above. Many insects will automatically move to the other side of the stem and release to fall when I get too close. Then they fall into the water and that’s that. For at least two of the insects I go after, Japanese beetles and asparagus beetles, this technique works great.
I’m not sure that drowning is more humane than squishing, or vise versa. I do know that handpicking insects makes me aware of how my plants are doing by observing them carefully and that it leaves no suspicious chemical residue. The goal is not to eliminate insects but to manage them enough that the plants have a fair start.
