tips & tricks
I had tried pretty much everything to stop the caterpillars from
decimating my cabbages—I mean everything. A close friend of
mine popped round one day, and we were sitting in the garden
having a coffee. The sun was out and it was a lovely day, all
very Middle England.
Sitting in view of the machine-gunned cabbages, my friend
said, “Caterpillar, right?”
“Right,” I said. “I just can’t seem to get anything to slow them
down or get rid of them.”
“Ohh, that’s easy,” he replied. “What you need is a bird table.”
He went on to tell me that what I should do is place a low bird
table in the middle of the cabbages, with a dried sunflower
seed bird dispenser. The sunflower seeds attracted finches to
my garden, and as the bird table was low to the cabbages, the
birds soon learned there were fat juicy caterpillars everywhere
for them to feast on to their hearts’ content.
Over time I reduced the amount of sunflower seeds
available and found that the birds still came to eat
the caterpillars. Within a week, it was hard to spot
one caterpillar and by the end of the month, they were
completely gone. To this day, the birds still come to check
if there’s any left, which is great for me as they also gently
fertilize the patch around the bird table with their droppings.
This ethos about considering a natural way to control pests
can also be brought into a greenhouse, with the introduction
of chickens, for example. Chickens love caterpillars (however,
they do tend to trample over everything in the process). Or
even in indoor growrooms with an insect such as parasitoid
wasps, which are a predator of aphids.
A sacrificial plant
is a plant that is normally
used when you have
already identified a
pest problem.”
SACRIFICIAL PLANTS
The second method involves using a variety of plants
available to help with your pest control. Even the use of
sacrificial plants are within the remits of the cycle, as it is
part of the giving and receiving process of the world. What’s
a sacrificial plant? Not commonly used by hobbyist indoor
gardeners, sacrificial plants are a great organic way to reduce
and sometimes completely eradicate pests. There are two
types: deterrent sacrificial plants and sacrificial plants.
A deterrent sacrificial plant is a plant (not part of your
current grow) that the common pest attracted to the product
you are producing doesn’t like. For example, a common
pest for tomato growers is plant lice. Plant lice do not
like chives or mint; in fact, they will actively avoid it. The
answer would be to plant a border of sacrificial mint around
the tomatoes you wish to protect. Breaking a few leaves
regularly on the mint plants will increase the potency of the
mint's deterrent attributes for the plant lice, keeping them
at bay. If you were to have an indoor garden, the best place
to put a few mint plants would be in the usual opening and
closing areas where pests are most common to come in and
out of the environment, such as intakes, outtakes, entrances,
air ports, and humidity control ports.
A sacrificial plant is a plant that is normally used when you
have already identified a pest problem. This is basically the
opposite of the deterrent plant—it is a plant that the pests
in question prefer, more than whatever you are growing.
A plant is put within the growing environment, in close
proximity to draw the pests away from your crop and onto
the preferred sacrificial plant. When the sacrificial plant has
become infested, it can then be removed from the growing
area, either to a place where no harm can be done or put back
into the cycle to create enriched soil and energy for the next
generation of plants. This cycle of using a sacrificial plant
can be repeated time and time again until the problem is at
a manageable level, or in some cases completely eradicated
from your growing environment.
Every insect or pest has a preferred
and non-preferred plant that can be
used. However, you do have to be
careful to pick the right sacrificial
plant for the crop you are intending
to grow. If you don’t do your research
natural—
properly, you might end up using
there is a balance
a deterrent sacrificial plant, which
will attract another type of pest that
in the world, a cycle
could potentially be worse than the
pest that you are trying to deter.
that takes and gives.”
Keep it
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grow cycle