Fight Orchard Pests with Flower Power!

A parasitoid wasp. Most of these wasps are under a quarter-
of-an-inch and none are able to sting humans.

I was talking to a friend a few weeks ago and he told me that he never sprays his apple trees, but he regularly has 25% of his apples worm free. He didn't know why, but I have a pretty good idea what is preventing his apples from being damaged.

My friend lives on his old family farm in Lehi, Ut and it is full of "weeds" that are left unsprayed and usually un-mowed. These feral plants feed all comers including small parasitoidal wasps. These wasps lay eggs on a number of pests, including apple codling moths. When the eggs hatch they start eating the pests.

This is not a perfect system, but it is a sensible way to have better fruit with no added chemicals. And you don't need to live on a farm to make it work! All you need is to plant more flowers.  Not all flowers are created the same and some flowers will do more to attract predators.

Below is a list of some of the more useful plants for attracting parasitiod wasps. They are all readily available in seed or plant form at your local nursery or on line.

Scientific Name	Common Name	Growth Type
Achillea spp.	Yarrow	Perennial
Agastache foeniculum	Anise hyssop	Perennial
Artemisia spp.	Wormwood, sagebrush	Perennial
Aster spp.	Aster	Perennial
Astragalus spp.	Vetch	Perennial
Baptisia spp.	False indigo	Perennial
Bellis perennis	English daisy	Perennial
Borago officinalis	Borage	Annual, reseeding
Caragana spp.	Peashrub	Shrub
Chamaemelum nobile	Roman, English chamomile	Perennial
Chrysogonum virginianum	Green and gold	Perennial
Coreopsis spp.	Tickseed	Perennial
Echinacea purpurea	Purple cone flower	Perennial
Foeniculum vulgare	Fennel	Perennial
Helianthus spp.	Sunflower, Sunchoke	Annual, perennial
Lupinus spp.	Lupine	Annual, perennial
Medicago satvia	Alfalfa	Perennial
Robinia hispida	Rosa acacia	Shrub
Robinia pseudoacacia	Black locust	Tree
Solidago spp.	Goldenrod	Perennial
Trifolium spp.	Sweet clover	Biennial

The best places to plant these plants is as need your orchard area as possible. In the case of the annuals and perennials, planting them under and around the fruit trees is best. If that is not possible, a flower bed near the trees would be the next best thing.

It will take a few years to start attracting wasps, so be patient and take the time to work with nature. Any other flowers, especially perennials, are likely to help, so feel free to add more flowers and flowerbeds to your property. All the good critters will love you for it.

Manana!

2014 Dormant Oil Spraying

It is too late to spray this apple.

The apricots are now blooming, so it is too late to do a dormant spray on them. But you can still treat your apples, peaches and nectarines, and pears.

If you had problems with any of these pests last year you can use organic dormant oil on them right now:

• Aphids
• Blister mites
• Brown mites
• Peach twig borer
• Pear psylla
• San Jose scale

Check the oil before you buy it to make sure it is listed as organic. Then mix 5 tablespoons of oil per 1 gallon water and shake it well. Oil is not a "poison," so you need to spray the tree heavily enough that the oil can plug up the breathing holes on the pests. This happens when the entire tree is dripping after being sprayed.

Temperatures should be between 50 and 70 degrees when you spray, and should not go below freezing in the 24 hours after spraying.

Start spraying right now, but you need to stop as soon as your:

• Apples have buds that are half green.
• Pears have a cluster of smaller buds bursting through the main bud.
• Peaches and nectarines show pink through the bud.

Dormant spraying does not help with codling moths or greater peach tree borer.

Designing Gardens for a Better Future

What I do is hard for most people to understand. The idea of growing food at home seems to have a hard time getting beyond the idea of the back yard raised planter. Much of that problem is caused by the concept that food production must be something that is hidden in the back yard, or put where the neighbors are not going to see it.

Many Americans have gone even further and decided that growing food is the job of professionals far away and that anyone trying to do it themselves is a menace and should be stopped. This is not far fetched if you look at city ordinances and HOA bylaws.

Since I am taking a step or five in the opposite direction of those trying to prohibit gardens, and since that still puts me a few steps away from the average gardener, I can see why there is a gap in understanding. To help clear up this gap here are some of the ideas I work with:

• Food and support of food should be the primary goal of the yard and home landscape.
• Plants do better with different types associated together.
• Planting different food crops in layers prevents waste of energy and plant nutrients.
• Food plants are beautiful.
• Perennial flowers are good for the food garden.
• The right balance of animals in the garden are better than trying to kill all the insects and critters.
• Perennial flowers are good for balancing the critters and insects.
• Fertilizer creation should be done at home whenever possible. 

To achieve these goals, thinking and design have to be stretched further than most people have the experience to do themselves. So, I try to do it for them.

Now that you have my ideas, what do you think your landscape should provide you?

I Dance with the Trees

Photos courtesy of Troy Nuttall

Yesterday, I finished a few last minute pruning jobs. As I did so, I thought of some of the tree trimmers I've worked with in the past. Each of those climbers have their own style and rhythm. 

Ryan roots himself to the ground so that no matter how high up he is, it looks like he is strolling through a spring day. Kevin hot dogs around the trees on his ropes, swinging from branch to branch like Tarzan. If he still doesn't have his adrenaline rush he takes his glasses off and lowers himself out of the tree upside down, like a spider. Max takes a calm, long term approach. I've seen him ride a tree to the ground after the roots gave out and walk away with nothing more than a calm smile.

Me? I'm not in the same athletic class as my friends, so my style depends a great deal on how my limbs connect with the tree's. Foot work is vital to me. Often times my feet point in opposite directions. They balance on bumps that don't exist and get wedged into angles that must be too tight for a guy wearing a wide shoe.

My arms are not left out. They move intricately around and through branches to hold myself in the tree, but still let me get a clean cut. My wife compares it to dancing, though I can't quite see the comparison. Each step is a tentative shifting affair, relying on an individual branch to tell me if it can handle what I am asking it to do.

There is a distinct rhythm as well. Not one that can be defined as something so simple as a three-quarter time or a standard category like a waltz. No, the rhythms I move to are deeply connected to the trees and to the earth itself. Deep, long, intricate rhythms.

Yes, I dance with the trees.

Time to Till?

This soil has been broken up and loosened
by winter freezing. All it needs is a good
weeding and it will be ready to plant.

So spring is come and your first thought of gardening is to get out there and till. After all, what is more fundamental than breaking up the soil for a good seed bed?


Or is it? The list of why we till includes: loosening the soil for planting and bed shaping, mixing in amendments, and annual weed removal. Lets take a closer look and see what we really need to till for:


Loosening Soil 
As long as the soil is not compacted, roots move through it with relative ease. Yes they will grow quicker with fluffy soil, but they will also burn through nutrients quicker and the tops of the plants will grow faster. You might say this is not a problem until you see your corn or prized flowers tip over after a wind or rain storm.


The real issue is if the soil is loose enough for you to plant your seeds and transplants. If you are adding a good organic mulch every year, the soil will be nice and soft without having to beat it up.


Bed shaping also does not require tilling if the soil has been taken care of. I find that I have fewer problems with garden beds slumping and shifting if I skip the tilling and keep up on the mulch.


Mixing Amendments
Most amendments will trickle into the soil or get stirred in by small critters. A layer of mulch on top will help this by giving the critters reason to move around to different layers in the soil. 


If you have to add a large amount of lime or gypsum, you may have to till to keep the them from hardening into a layer of concrete. Also, treating a sodic soil is a special situation that requires many unusual practices to correct.


Weed Removal
There is nothing like getting out there and ripping weeds apart with a power tool. This is very effective with annual weeds. But for those weeds that hang on for more that a year it is only a delaying tactic. All those perennial weeds that get cut up will root back down and send up shoots leaving you with more weeds than you started with. To really kill the perennials, you will need to remove all the plant bits or till every two weeks for the next three years.


Tilling will also bring buried seeds to the surface where they can easily sprout on a soil that has been prepared especially for their liking.


A much more effective and long term remedy for weeds is to remove as much of the individual weed as you can, then use a fully biodegradable weed barrier (read cardboard, newspaper, or craft paper) covered by a thick layer of mulch.




Reality is that tilling is a fine tool for extreme situations. But for average soils on the standard home garden it simply isn't needed. Good soil maintenance with liberal applications of clean, good quality mulch will get you much more now and for years to come.

Pesticide Thoughts

A vital part of my organic pest control system.

I garden mostly organic. That is to say, what most old timers would call organic before the government hijacked the word. But beyond that, I have a few caveats I insist on.


The first of these is safety. I like all sorts of critters in my gardens, including the stinging ones. But if they scare my daughter or sting me I will finish off the offending nest. 


The second is using up existing stocks of fertilizer. I use chemical fertilizer sparingly in controlled doses. I figure I will do more damage over time by throwing it away.


There are other things, but that gives you the basic picture. I know that many of my readers use some or lots of chemicals. And I know others use none. My hope is to generate a constructive discussion so that we can all understand each other better.


I've come up with three scenarios. These are based on situations that happen in the real world although the specifics are not true.


Please feel free to make well thought out comments. Be ready to back up your points and accept the views of others as valid, even if you disagree.

Scenario #1
The health minister of a small, third world nation is faced with a growing death toll due to malaria. He is working with the Western democracies to educate his people on how to improve their conditions, but the reality is that it will take years. It doesn't help that much of the nation is on low lying land and has natural pools of standing water.

Most of the government is corrupt, but due to international pressure they have provided a small amount of money to combat the problem. As the minister looks at his resources he realizes that he has just enough money for a mosquito elimination program using DDT. The money is not sufficient for anything else, not even one of the newer pesticides. If he uses the DDT, new cases of malaria will drop to almost nothing.

Scenario #2
Six months ago you picked up some bed bugs at a hotel while you were visiting family on the East coast, and they have infested your home. You've done your research, but the only things you can find that are not chemical based involve putting a quarantine on your house and possessions for at least a year or use a plant derived 'repellant'.

You opted to use the repellant, and it works fine on you, but the kids are suffering worse that ever. They're always covered with bites and the new mattresses you bought are already covered with bed bug feces.

Your in-laws are reluctantly willing to take you in, but they think you are being silly and should just spray. In fact, they just had their house sprayed as a precaution.

Scenario #3
A farmer in 1950s Idaho has the opportunity to spray nicotine insecticides on his wheat and potatoes. Other farmers in the area use it already and are impressed with the results. One of his friends doesn't trust chemicals, but since the cigarettes they both smoke have nicotine in them, the farmer thinks his friend is just being a little crazy. 


The farmer is old enough to remember the Great Depression and is willing to do just about anything to make his farm work so his family doesn't have to see that kind of poverty again.


Now, the question to all of you is what would you do under these conditions? Remember to be courteous, back up your position in a well thought out manner, and respect other points of view especially if they are radically different from your own.


Please be brutally honest with yourselves, though. Don't cheat yourself out of paying the price on any of your choices.

Growing Nutritious Food

The western world is becoming more and more conscious of what it eats, finally. But we are struggling with deciding what is really healthy. While the long held definition of a nutrient is that the nutrient is required by the body for basic life, is good for some things, it is a far cry from a comprehensive definition of what is healthy.

Scientists are now looking at many naturally occurring chemicals and the affect they have on our bodies and trying to decide what is really important. Given the size of the task, it will be decades before we have a good foundation for what we really need in our food. Maybe centuries.

But if you turn away from the more complex science, the answers become clear. Healthy food will be food that is raised healthy. That should make sense even to a non-farmer or gardener.

Here are some of the more important factors:

Plant Nutrients 
Make sure the plants have balanced nutrients. This includes all the micro and macro nutrients. Most of the nutrients are more likely to be deficient, but two are more likely to be in excess: nitrogen and water. Yes water. Watch how much nitrogen and water you use.

Sunlight 
Sunlight is the basic energy for plants. You can have everything else in abundance, but the plant won't live if it doesn't get light. Most common food plants grow best with full sun, but only a few are damaged by too much sun. Do your research and adjust accordingly.

Color 
Typically plants with more color have higher levels of nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals. Choose species and varieties with higher intensity of color in the part that you eat. A good example is zucchini versus butternut. The butternut comes out way ahead for nutrition.

Organic Content of Soil 
This is another way of saying carbon in the soil. While there are many ways to get organics in the soil, including adding charcoal, the best ways are to add compost and plant based mulches. Soils with high amounts of organics grow better for a number of reasons, enough that I’ll have to cover that in a later post.

You will eat better if you grow your own food and will have better food if you plan ahead with these factors in mind.