As June proceeds toward July and the garden’s produce starts to fruit and swell toward delicious goodness, it’s time to say some things about pest control. Whether you’ve got tomato/cornworms or potato beetles or Japanese beetles or slugs (or whatever), it can be incredibly frustrating to have to guard your hard work and future food supply from six-or-no-legged freeloaders.
You could purchase some pyrethrin-based sprays or powders, but those don’t last longer than the next rain or watering. You could opt for serious nerve toxins (that accumulate and are difficult to wash off produce, and are controlled substances even as trash), but then you could have saved the energy and ground and simply purchased poison food from the local grocery store.
Or you could try some of the things I’ve found useful in my career as a ‘naturally grown’ food producer (I tried to jump USDA hoops for ‘organic’ certification, it was expensive as hell and I had to put up with feds on my property twice a season to “inspect” my crops). Some of these work better than others, and some work better on some critters than others. So you may wish to mix and match or test a few this season. When you find something that works against what you’re up against, write it down! That way you can clearly label your stores as to what they’re used on and be two steps ahead of the freeloaders every year!
Personal Protection
First and foremost in my pest control strategy is to protect myself from the hoards of biting, stinging and sucking critters that would much rather eat me than the produce in my garden. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten self-protection because I was ‘just’ going to go clip some mint or take the compost out, only to end up doing a little weeding and tying up of tomatoes or mulching since I was there… then come in and spend the whole rest of the day scratching numerous gnat and mosquito bites, checking for ticks, treating bee or wasp stings…
You could spend a fortune on those DEET-based insect repellant sprays. They do work well, but also cause cancer eventually. Probably better than dying of West Nile fever or something, but there’s got to be a better way! Skin-So-Soft makes me sneeze uncontrollably, and the smell makes me sicker than it makes mosquitoes. But if you’re growing a proper amount of mints/catnip and/or lemon balm, you can use that instead.
I have found that lemon balm works best of these remedies, all of which are classified as mints. Lemon balm not only makes a nice tea, it has that lemony smell that insects don’t like at all. You could make of any of these a strong decoction and put it into a spray bottle. The problem with this ‘tea’ is that it loses its strength quickly and doesn’t stay on once you’re sweating. So I make an oil instead. My recipe:
2 cups fresh clipped herb (peppermint, lemon mint, catnip or lemon balm, top leaves and stems)
2 cups vegetable oil (olive is nice and keeps well, but expensive unless you buy it by the gallon)
Crush the fresh leaves and stems to break the cell walls. I use a size large mortar and pestle, but you could just put ‘em in the blender. Put the crushed herb into a quart jar and add the oil. Sit the jar in a sunny window and allow to sit (shake once a day) for about 10 days to 2 weeks. Filter into a pint size spray container and label as insect repellant.
Spray it on when you go outside, smear liberally on all exposed skin. The vegetable oil and mint are actually very good for your skin (you’ll look young and fresh!). It doesn’t dilute into nothing if you’re sweating, and will last for a couple of hours before you will need to refresh.
Beetle and Caterpillar Defense
Beetles have strong exoskeletons that are difficult to affect. But they do eat your crop leaves, so what you spray on those to repel or kill slugs, caterpillars and/or grubs will affect them when they eat it. Bt powders are used in organic farming, but as powders they have the same problems as Sevin or pyrethrin. So I use my “Satanic Sauce” against them instead.
The hottest of hot peppers I grow for my hot-pepper loving family are the habaneros. Though I’d be tempted to grow a couple of “Ghost Pepper” Jalokia plants if those were available, just for bug-juice. But since I can’t (and don’t want to buy it ground off the web), I grow habaneros instead. I let them get all the way to day-glo orange-red before harvesting. Some of these go straight to my friend-the-bartender’s bar, where they tempt macho drunks to drink a whole lot more. The rest go into my hot sauce, which ranges from “Wow” to “Nuclear” all the way to “Satanic” depending on how hot they are that year (based on weather conditions, primarily). Last year’s were “Satanic,” so I went ahead and made plant spray at the same time.
I learned the hard way not to actually handle these things, even with gloves on. Always end up with a burn somewhere from brushing hair out of my eyes, scratching an itch, or just getting some on my hands or arms. Spent an entire night with my hands in ice water one year with torturous burns that never actually showed up (because capsaicin doesn’t actually burn your skin), so I just pull off their caps and put ‘em in the blender. Grind ‘em (seeds and all) into fine mush, then put this in a pot for processing with tomatoes, onions and vinegar.
For the bug spray I just put some mush in with vegetable oil (regular, not olive) and steep for a couple of weeks in the sun, then filter into a spray bottle. You can add some garlic to the mush, but it’s the pepper that works best. I spray it on the grape leaves, potato and tomato plants, and on the dark green leafies if slugs are out of hand. I haven’t lost more than a plant or two to beetles or slugs or caterpillars or grubs since I started doing this. The spray will last through two or three waterings or rainstorms. When you have to do it again.
The thing to remember is NOT to use the spray within a week or two of harvest, or your tomatoes and collards will taste positively “Satanic.” I have found this spray works on pretty much every kind of pest, and is a lot less trouble in-season that beer-bowls and such (yes, slugs WILL go for the beer and drown themselves in it, but it’s a waste of good beer and must be done every morning if it rains).
And a final word of good advice…
Do NOT mislabel your spray jars. If you use the pepper spray on your skin you’ll be very, very sorry. If you use the mint spray on the plants, the bugs will learn to like it.
Happy gardening!
