Defensively, the best way to begin using OPM in your garden is to start with healthy soil and plants. Most plants thrive in well-drained soil that’s high in organic matter. Inspect any plants brought into your garden carefully for signs of stress, disease, infestation or overcrowded roots. Use only healthy, quality seedlings and transplants.
Offensively, know thy enemy. The best time to start battling pests in your garden is before they appear. Using the principals of OPM, you can take specific steps that make sense for your particular garden to prevent pests from damaging or even ruining your crops, without having to resort to harmful chemicals.
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If you’re new to gardening, your neighbors who garden are your best source of information. Ask them about what pests they typically deal with for the crops you want to grow. Ask how they handle it. Your local Cooperative Extension Service office is another good source of information on the kinds of pests in your area and about resistant cultivars.
Armed with this intelligence, you can do research to draw up your battle plan in advance of the arrival of enemy troops. You might decide to grow a trap crop that will attract unwanted bugs more than your nearby food crop. You might choose to try pheromone-disruptors that interfere with insect breeding cycles. Maybe parasitic nematodes are the answer to protect your carrots from wireworms and carrot rust flies and other pests. Floating row covers can keep out a variety of insects as well as birds. Look for plants bred for specific disease resistances.
Don’t rush out and buy a lot of supplies. Patience is ever a virtue in a garden. Choose one or two battles you especially want to win and one or two easy skirmishes, and make your best preparations. Most items will be easy enough to locate if you decide you really need them later.
This can’t be stressed strongly enough. Soil-borne diseases and microorganisms and insect pests will return for an easy meal next season if you keep serving dinner in the same spot. At least make them work for the meal by having to search all over the garden for it first.
A gardening journal or calendar can remind you when pest control measures need to be put in place or renewed. A gardening journal can also help you track the dates your crops were set out, the cultivar names and expected dates to maturity. You can log fertilization records, track rainfall and temperatures; whatever data you feel might be help you to become more informed and successful in coming seasons.
Patrol those borders regularly. Keep an eye out for plants that look stressed or sickly and inspect them carefully for signs of infestation. Pinching off a few affected leaves may resolve the problem before it can spread, but if a plant looks decidedly ill, don’t risk letting it infect the others around it. Remove that poor soldier and give it a decent burial; just not in your compost pile.
There are plenty of other options to try before resorting to pesticides if you have a pest problem that’s getting out of control. There are insecticidal soaps, or biological controls like milky spore disease for beetle infestations. You could try diatomaceous earth as a physical barrier for crawling, soft-bodied insects.
Neem is a broad-spectrum insect repellent that is said to be low in toxicity to mammals and mild to beneficial insects. According to Growing Fruits & Vegetables Organically, published 1994 by Rodale Press editors Jean M. A. Nick and Fern Marshall Bradley, Neem has been used in human herbal medicine for centuries.
When handling any kind of biological control substance, follow label instructions closely and wear protective gear if recommended.
As a general principal, start off with the least invasive or toxic means at your disposal and give it a few days to take affect before taking stronger measures. Be prepared to sacrifice a few plants to spare the rest, rather than spray toxins around.
You won’t win every battle against the overwhelmingly-massed forces arrayed against you. But there will be spoils enough for the victor – you – to make the victory sweet, if you’re willing engage the enemy on your home turf in this perennial struggle of man versus pest.
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