Community Gardens: Fertilizing and Pest Control Part 4

If you have been following this series on Community Gardens, you have thus far read about what community garden is, how to organize one in your community garden, what types of rules and concepts need to be decided upon before putting your organization together and how to choose your gardening site. You also have read about the amount of chores required to prepare a garden site and maintain it.

This article will focus on how to keep your garden site fertilized correctly as well as protect it from pests.

To start, one must understand some basics of gardening. If you are creating a community garden, it is most likely you already understand this. For those who are reading this article and are interested in participating in a community garden, who have never gardened before –this information is for you.

When it comes to growing healthy plants and food, you must have healthy soil. Soil requires a certain blend of nutrients to feed your plants. One way to maintain healthy nutrients in the soil is to not plant the same plants over and over in the same place. Why? Certain plants require a lot of one type of nutrient from the soil and can deplete the soil before long, if not rotated out.  For example, corn requires a lot of nitrogen. Planting corn over and over again, without feeding the soil, could deplete it of the nitrogen it could need the next growing season.

Your garden soil must maintain the three major nutrients, which are nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). Adding fertilizer can help sustain these nutrients and replenish them year after year. There are four basic types of fertilizers used for this, they include composts, animal manures, natural or organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers.

How do you know what your garden soil needs? You can take a soil test and the results will show you what you may be lacking. These tests can be very effective when conducted in the Fall.  If you add your fertilizer or needed nutrients before winter, they will have plenty of time to be absorbed before the spring planting. Manure, in particular, which has not been composted, should never be applied when vegetable or fruit plants are mature, because it can infect plants with bacteria that could make you sick if you consume them.

Chemical or artificial fertilizers should be avoided if at all possible, because the regular use of them can actually impede the soil’s ability to hold nutrients. Overuse of chemical fertilizers in conventional agricultural practices and turf grass management has also been proven to have negative effects on soil and water resources. For healthy plants and people, ditch the chemicals!

Now for pest control.  While there are many beneficial insects that your plants rely on to keep them healthy and productive, there are also some insects and animals that will harm your garden by attacking the leaves, fruits, or roots of your plants. Each state and region is different in regards to the pest problems they might face, so check with your local gardening associations, or agricultural agencies to find out what garden pests are most common.

Once you discover what you are facing, there are only a few methods you will use to protect your plants. These include physical control, cultural control, biological control and chemical control.

Physical control means that you have to physically keep pests out of your garden with barriers and traps. You can also remove pests by hand on a one-by-one basis.

For large pests such as deer and rabbits, you can install fencing or mesh and wire barriers. The mesh and wire will also help protect your seedlings from birds.

Companion planting is another natural way to practice pest control. This is one of the oldest and most well known types of control. For example, you can plant marigolds to ward off flying pests and nematodes, but many other plants can do the job as well. Chives, coriander, and nasturtium can help ward off aphids; rosemary and sage keep carrot flies at bay; hyssop, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme keep cabbage moths out of your garden.

Last is chemical. Chemical controls should only be relied on as a last resort, because they can harm the soil and the beneficial insects that you need in your garden. Chemicals are also expensive, and will be washed off of your garden when it rains where they can pollute groundwater and waterways like streams and rivers. Use chemicals only if you can find no other way to cope with the pests in your garden, and then do so sparingly. Insect-specific chemical treatments, like slug pellets or Japanese beetle traps, will have little or no impact on the beneficial insects in your garden, but these can still have negative environmental consequences. Always make sure to read instructions carefully, and use only the minimum amounts recommended.

Gardening takes time and care, but it can be done easily with a little information and some practice. Keeping a journal of your gardening experiments, noting what works and doesn’t work can also be beneficial as you progress with your community garden.

Community Gardens: Fertilizing and Pest Control

If you have been following this series on Community Gardens, you have thus far read about what community garden is, how to organize one in your community garden, what types of rules and concepts need to be decided upon before putting your organization together and how to choose your gardening site. You also have read about the amount of chores required to prepare a garden site and maintain it.

This article will focus on how to keep your garden site fertilized correctly as well as protect it from pests.

To start, one must understand some basics of gardening. If you are creating a community garden, it is most likely you already understand this. For those who are reading this article and are interested in participating in a community garden, who have never gardened before –this information is for you.

When it comes to growing healthy plants and food, you must have healthy soil. Soil requires a certain blend of nutrients to feed your plants. One way to maintain healthy nutrients in the soil is to not plant the same plants over and over in the same place. Why? Certain plants require a lot of one type of nutrient from the soil and can deplete the soil before long, if not rotated out.  For example, corn requires a lot of nitrogen. Planting corn over and over again, without feeding the soil, could deplete it of the nitrogen it could need the next growing season.

Your garden soil must maintain the three major nutrients, which are nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K). Adding fertilizer can help sustain these nutrients and replenish them year after year. There are four basic types of fertilizers used for this, they include composts, animal manures, natural or organic fertilizers, and chemical fertilizers.

How do you know what your garden soil needs? You can take a soil test and the results will show you what you may be lacking. These tests can be very effective when conducted in the Fall.  If you add your fertilizer or needed nutrients before winter, they will have plenty of time to be absorbed before the spring planting. Manure, in particular, which has not been composted, should never be applied when vegetable or fruit plants are mature, because it can infect plants with bacteria that could make you sick if you consume them.

Chemical or artificial fertilizers should be avoided if at all possible, because the regular use of them can actually impede the soil’s ability to hold nutrients. Overuse of chemical fertilizers in conventional agricultural practices and turf grass management has also been proven to have negative effects on soil and water resources. For healthy plants and people, ditch the chemicals!

Now for pest control.  While there are many beneficial insects that your plants rely on to keep them healthy and productive, there are also some insects and animals that will harm your garden by attacking the leaves, fruits, or roots of your plants. Each state and region is different in regards to the pest problems they might face, so check with your local gardening associations, or agricultural agencies to find out what garden pests are most common.

Once you discover what you are facing, there are only a few methods you will use to protect your plants. These include physical control, cultural control, biological control and chemical control.

Physical control means that you have to physically keep pests out of your garden with barriers and traps. You can also remove pests by hand on a one-by-one basis.

For large pests such as deer and rabbits, you can install fencing or mesh and wire barriers. The mesh and wire will also help protect your seedlings from birds.

Companion planting is another natural way to practice pest control. This is one of the oldest and most well known types of control. For example, you can plant marigolds to ward off flying pests and nematodes, but many other plants can do the job as well. Chives, coriander, and nasturtium can help ward off aphids; rosemary and sage keep carrot flies at bay; hyssop, mint, oregano, rosemary, sage, and thyme keep cabbage moths out of your garden.

Last is chemical. Chemical controls should only be relied on as a last resort, because they can harm the soil and the beneficial insects that you need in your garden. Chemicals are also expensive, and will be washed off of your garden when it rains where they can pollute groundwater and waterways like streams and rivers. Use chemicals only if you can find no other way to cope with the pests in your garden, and then do so sparingly. Insect-specific chemical treatments, like slug pellets or Japanese beetle traps, will have little or no impact on the beneficial insects in your garden, but these can still have negative environmental consequences. Always make sure to read instructions carefully, and use only the minimum amounts recommended.

Gardening takes time and care, but it can be done easily with a little information and some practice. Keeping a journal of your gardening experiments, noting what works and doesn’t work can also be beneficial as you progress with your community garden.

More Pest Control Articles

If there is anything that prevents your organic garden from yielding the best vegetables, it will have to be the pests that invade and surround your area. Now, if you are really serious about controlling those pests and keeping them out of your garden for good, a volume of materials is readily available for you to be equipped and knowledgeable about the various types of pests that can threaten your crop.

The very hard thing about pest control is the fact that there are so many types of pests that can invade your garden; it will really be quite a challenge to recall them in one sitting, so full immersion to your gardening activities is the only surefire way to inculcate ample knowledge on pests to watch out for.

One of the tried and tested tactics for pest control is by familiarizing yourself with the famous insects and animals. These enemies of the garden will really hamper the growth of your crop only if you let them.

Aphids

You will often find sticky groups of insects that are invading your garden in hues of red if you have aphids in your garden. Fortunately, you can easily remedy this by spraying it with soap insecticide or any similar material. Aphids are common to almost every garden vegetable you can possibly imagine, so if you are growing vegetables, you are most likely to encounter these sticky organisms.

Beetles

You have two options for beetles: manually remove them by hand or spray them with insecticide that is poisonous to them. If left untreated, beetles have the capacity to bore so much holes on your leaves and eat away at your vegetation over time, especially when their population has already burgeoned. Beetles comes in a variety of types, but the remedy for it is usually the two techniques mentioned above.

Cabbage Worms

Neem oil is the cabbage worms’ worst enemy, so if you spray them with it, they will be out of your garden in a jiffy. The thing is, you can determine whether cabbage worm are in the garden if you find green caterpillar and holes on the leaves of your plants. You can also pick them by hand if you are more courageous or maybe spray them with insecticide if you don’t have neem oil handy at the time of infestation.

Cut Worms

If you see crawling, dull caterpillars that are brown in color, then you have found cutworms invading your territory! Placing paper collars around plants after digging around the area may help prevent cutworms from taking up your precious soil and nutrients. Some chemicals may also work like insecticides, but this is a general cure. You also need to dig a lot because the cut worms have this tendency to snuggle up on your plants for shade and life.

Maggots

Maggots are extremely disgusting, and they tend to make your landscape ugly if you do not try to get rid of them. Bleaching is one of the best ways to get rid of maggots. If your organic garden is also situated beside a garbage bag, you may choose to transfer your garbage bag elsewhere because leftover meals like meat tend to attract these maggots and they might decide to branch out of the garbage bin and into your garden.

There are many other kinds of pests that you can control in your garden given the right handy tools and knowledge on how to best eliminate them from your organic garden.

When you practice indoor gardening, one of the issues that can diminish the fun is the number and ferocity of insect pests that can wreak havoc with your plants. There are, however, several indoor gardening supplies that can be used to control various pests from damaging your indoor crops, and will thus increase your plants’ yields. Indoor gardening supplies can include such pest control products as powder sulfur and spider mite control, to name a few.

Powder sulfur

Powder sulfur is one of the indoor gardening supplies that will best control thrips. Thrips will puncture the cells of your plants and suck out the contents of the cells, resulting in cosmetic damage to crops. Sulfur can be used in a vaporizer unit, which sends out sulfur vapors into your indoor gardening area. Sulfur will change the pH level on the plant’s leaves and stems, which will cause damage to pest reproduction cycles. Changing the pH level also has the added advantage of reducing the common plant disease of powdery mildew, which can be a problem in damp greenhouse settings.

Spider Mite Control

Indoor pest control can also include a program for reducing spider mites. Indoor gardening supplies used for spider mite control include beneficial insects.

This form of controlling spider mites can be used as an initial means of implementing integrated pest management, also called IPM. This is a method whereby you initialize your pest management by using the least toxic means of controlling the problem, and move up the chain to more powerful and toxic solutions only if necessary.

Beneficial insects are an organic gardening solution for controlling spider mites. Although they are very tiny insects, when amassed in large groups they can decimate a greenhouse crop very quickly. They, like thrips, suck the contents out of plant cells, leaving a scar on the leaves and stems of the plants. If a plant has too many of these scars, it suffers a reduction in photosynthetic ability, causing it to not be able to take in enough nutrients. This can eventually kill the plant.

There are beneficial insects that will kill spider mites. Although its name is not easy to pronounce, Phytoseiulus persimilis is nevertheless one of the indoor gardener’s best friends when it comes to spider mite control.

When using a beneficial insect as a method of controlling another harmful insect, you will want to release the beneficials as soon as you detect a pest problem, because the sooner they get to work, the sooner they will eliminate the problematic greenhouse insect guest. These are one form of indoor gardening supplies that work best indoors, because they keep their feeding focused in one small area to get rid of the pests efficiently.

Indoor gardening supplies including pest control systems can be found to meet your specific indoor gardening needs, suitable for the particular types of plants you grow.