Two Basic Principles of Organic Gardening Pest Control
The first principle is do no harm and try to understand what it is you're really trying to kill.
A short story about this - many people see a problem on a tree or bush, see ants climbing around in the plant and decide the ants are the problem. The real problem is that some sapsucker bird has pecked away at the tree, made a wound and the ants are scurrying up to get their share of the sap. So are ants the problem or is the sapsucker bird the problem?. Now you get the idea - the bug you see isn't always the bug doing the damage
The second principle is to use the least offensive control substance you can.
A short story here too. Problem insects breed quickly - think rabbits in the wild. The predators breed more slowly - think owls and hawks. So when you wipe out the problems with a broad spectrum insecticide, you're always wiping out the predators. Guess which return faster? You got it - when you wipe out both the problem and the predator, the problem is going to return faster. This is why we try to use only organic gardening pest control products that are specific to individual pests if we have to use them at all.
A second point - not only insects respond this way but so do bacterial and fungal problems in plants. They both have problem species and predator species so not only does this principle apply to insects, it can also apply to diseases.
Identifying Insects
You may be interested in this page where a great many common insect pests have been photographed by other readers, shared and identified. The are sorted by color so when you see an insect, you can find out if it's a good guy or a bad guy if you pay attention to the color and shape of the insect.comments powered by Disqus
