More crawlies: aphids? spider mites? and some recipes

I feel like I've experienced just about every pest going in my garden: wireworm, crane fly larvae, cutworms, tent caterpillars, slugs and snails, cabbageworm, spinach leaf miner, and sugar ants.

I took a picture of the specks of dirt on the backs of some troubled tomato leaves, which I thought were just water-stressed. When I blew the images up, the specks turn out to have legs,



and I'm guessing spider mites or else aphids. Apparently the spider mite larvae are six legged, while the spiders have eight. They can be carried by wind, and my tomato pots sit at the top of a windy driveway just waiting for pestilence to reach them. Aphids can apparently cause leaf curl. Whichever one it is, the remedies seem to be the same.

Spray the leaves top and bottom with:

• water: water critters off the leaves and then mist to keep the leaves moist (spider mites prefer dry, arid conditions whereas their natural predators prefer damp, moist conditions)
• a liquid seaweed solution
• a solution of food-grade diatomaceous earth (kills larvae and spiders but not the eggs)
• a spray made with rhubarb leaves (the oxalic acid kills aphids and mites)
• a spray made with soap solution (a classic solution for aphids too, though in the hottest part of the season this can burn the leaves)
• a spray made with olive oil or neem oil (the oil smothers the aphids, mites and eggs; neem has fungicidal properties as well); can combine the oil and soap
  
• dormant oil (the sulfur combats both aphids/mites and mildew)
• compost tea (or combinations of water, compost tea, molasses, liquid seaweed and apple cider

Or introduce predators such as ladybugs, pirate bugs, predatory thrips, and predatory mites; but if you're also spraying even with organic solutions (except plain water) you risk doing these guys in too.

I don't know how spider mites feel about baking soda but if the plant is also afflicted with a fungal disease such as early blight, black spot or powdery mildew, here's a recipe for a spray to treat all of that:

Baking soda spray
Mix four teaspoons baking soda with one teaspoon of vegetable oil or horticultural oil into one gallon of water.

And a whole list of organic remedies from the Dirt Doctor.

Companion plantings

I've researched companion plantings for a while now; the subject is fraught with contradiction and variation, so I guess you just have to see what works in your garden. There's a lot of advice, for example, about planting marigolds. But the slugs love mine so much they've devastated most of the flat I planted this year, on their way to the seedlings.

The book to have seems to be Carrots Love Tomatoes: Secrets of Companion Planting for Successful Gardening, which is useful and interesting and arranged encyclopedia-style. A few others appear in the bibliography of this 3 page fact sheet from the Toronto Botanical Garden.

Here are some websites and tables to consult as well (I have also tried to work out where these sites are located as this is of course critical to growing anything-- the librarian in me is having hissy-fits over how many gardening sites don't seem to think it matters if people know what climactic region they're based in):

About.com - Companion Planting - article geared towards organic landscaping, but with a lot of useful links at the end.
Basic Info 4 Organic Fertilizers - Companion plants to ward off pests - alphabetical listing (Texas)
Cass County Extension (from North Dakota State University) - Companion planting - table listing most common vegetables, their friends and enemies. (North Dakota)
Gardens Ablaze - Companion planting for better yields - detailed table listing plants with compatible and incompatible companions [California][?]
Georgia Strait Alliance - Alternatives to Pesticides - pdf file with lists of plants that will attract beneficial insects and repel or deter pests, and suggestions for a number of alternative treatments to problems like fleas and powdery mildew, and notes about insecticides Pyrethrum, Pyrethrins and Rotenone. (Nanaimo BC)
HowToGardenAdvice - Companion Planting for your Vegetable Garden - some useful background and a table with links to growing tips for different vegetables. [Arizona][?]
Tinkers Gardens - Vegetable companion planting chart - two tables, for vegetables and herbs, with good and bad companions. [Texas][?]

Oil and food

I'm currently researching the links between fossil fuels and farming, spurred on to a large extent by the excellent BBC documentary A Farm for the Future (available in 5 bits on Youtube). A couple of things to read on this subject:

What will we eat as the oil runs out was the November 2007 lecture given by Richard Heinberg. A cogent analysis of what oil has to do with food production, and what factors are driving food prices and shortages. Grim but necessary reading.

Heinberg is no stranger to the Post Carbon Institute, whose epic read The Food and Farming Transition: Toward a Post Carbon Food System says it all in a forward-looking way.

And Jonathan Wright, of Thompson Small Farm, near Calgary, is waving the flag for farming sustainability in a series of postings for New Resilient.

The IAASTD's awesome 660 page report on world farming, Agriculture at a Crossroads (don't worry, the key findings are summed up at the beginning).

New growth

I thought I'd split myself, much as one does, say, with a bulb of garlic, and plant a new blog to hold all my growing thoughts, findings and photos on matters vegetative.



After last year's practice work with growing tomatoes in big pots, and a few random potatoes, this year marked my first of serious vegetable growing. And I'm not all that sure how serious it is even now. Random, certainly, as the blog name suggests, but I wouldn't confuse what I'm doing with a fully functional vegetable patch.



I'm working with poor light, in a small north-facing garden overshadowed by tall (protected species) trees, and one mature yellow transparent apple tree; had I not chopped down the energetic and youthful plane tree someone once saw fit to plant here (and whose roots still intrude on the wee veg plot I made where it stood) I'd have no light at all. Most of the best of it falls on a paved area that once housed a carport.

The front garden is in dappled shade all summer, its flowerbeds protected from both sun and rain by two towering trees. I get a cool breeze every afternoon which can be a bit too brisk for some plants, as it whistles up my driveway and into the back.

My garden boasts some of Victoria's hardest and poorest clay soil, on which grows a scrappy pair of lawns and a number of elderly and aphid-plagued, blackspotted rose bushes. I'm on the lower part of a downward slope, so my lawn, like most around here, resembles a very wet sponge in the winter.

My garden beds, which I've been coaxing back to health with leaf mulch and expensive helpings of Sea Soil, are tiny. They are homes to slugs, snails, wireworm, leaf miners, earwigs and something that may be cutworm or crane fly larvae or both; ants and aphids are everywhere; this year's entertainment has included the encroachment of tent caterpillars and a bumper crop of yellowjackets. Plants that love it here include bluebells, day lilies, morning glory, English ivy, holly, hawthorn, Himalayan blackberry, daisies and dandelions.

And of this I am making what I can, largely through the use of containers. I thought I'd experiment with them and then see if I wanted to start biting into my lawn, using some lasagne (sheet mulching) techniques to improve drainage and start with better soil. Another thought I have is to cover some or all of my patio area with a hoop house, or add a greenhouse-type extension to my garden shed.



In addition to the garden beds, I'm using wading pools (with holes punch in them), wine barrel halves (ditto), pots of many sizes, one topsy-turvy tomato bag, and car tires, in which I am growing:

apples (yellow transparent)
arugula
artichokes
beans (bush and scarlet runner)
beets (red and golden)
blueberries
carrots
celery
celeriac
day lilies
eggplant
fennel
kale
leeks
mustard greens
onions
peppers
physalis (cape gooseberry/ground cherry)
potatoes (red norland, yukon gold, banana fingerlings)
purple sprouting broccoli
rhubarb
spinach
squash (hubbard and acorn)
strawberries
swiss chard
tomatoes (beefsteak, roma-style and mystery volunteers)

In my herb garden I have

basil
bay
chives
marjoram
parsley
sage (purple)
thyme
rosemary

Flowers I'm growing for the bees and bugs include

california lilac
echinacea
honeysuckle
marigold
nasturtium