Organic growing tips.

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Comment by Poppy on September 26, 2008 at 1:33pm

For slater control try one part pyrethrum to one part flour, can be wet or dry. Place traps near woodheaps or rubbish piles, make sure traps are covered as pyrethrum becomes ineffective when in conact with light, icecream containers with hole in bottom are ideal... hope this helps, Poppy

Comment by Jasmine on August 25, 2008 at 12:22pm

I'd love to grow organically so I thought this would be a good place to start. ;-)
Grace+Peace

Comment by Shore on August 19, 2008 at 8:48am

Hello. I am fairly new to organic gardening but it is my intent to try and grow my produce as rganically as possible. I have a container garden (all edible) and am just about to build my first squarefoot garden for this spring. Look forward to swapping stories and knowledge :)

Comment by Tony on August 12, 2008 at 10:29am

Further to Grey's request, I too am having plagues of slaters( or wood lice, I assume they are the same thing). They are destroying my pak choy when they are seedlings. I have found that my snail traps( ie those that you put beer in to atract snails and slugs) kill them by the hundreds, but does not impact on their numbers at all.

Comment by Grey on July 2, 2008 at 12:52pm

Athen - it makes sense because it spreads pathogens, I've heard of it but I think I'm too squeemish to try it :-)

I find a bannister brush is useful for sweeping the leaves regularly and dislodging eggs. I am extremely grateful for the presence of paperbark wasps which tirelessly patrol every day anjd if I really HAVE to I'll use derris dust which is bes puffed from a heinz sauce bottle. The squeezy sort with a nozzle that's offset from centre. But that's really more a theory than practice for me. A bad outbreak of aphid or white fly usually means i lose some crop and i put it down ton lack of pot ash and sulphur. Letting things come into balance is always the best thing I find.

One problem i do have is wood lice plagues when i mulch well. Any ideas on that? What I do at present is raise seedlings to a good size in pots before planting .

Comment by Barbelle on June 27, 2008 at 11:27pm

I had some aphids on my brassicas which I decided to control using a spray of soapy water. The only spray bottle at hand was one we had used in summer, containing water and a few drops of tea tree oil, a mixture that we had been using as a spray on insect repellant. I added about 2 teaspoons of plain soap dissolved in warm water to the remnants of this mixture and sprayed it around the foliage of the caulis that were being attacked by aphids. Surprisingly, about a dozen green caterpillars (cabbage moth) exited the caulis and went into death throws. I had no idea they were there. Five days later I made up a new mixture (2 btsp soap, 4 drops tea tree oil, 750n ml warm water) and repeated the treatment. It killed another 5 caterpillars. As far as I can tell the caulis are now bug free.

Comment by Dan and Sarah Davies on June 25, 2008 at 4:23pm

I recently read that one of the best ways to control slugs and the like is with a 1:10 mix of strong espresso coffee to water and spray it on them and onto the lower leaves of the plant. The slug crawls over it and essentially absorbs the caffeine, which in turn kills the slug.

Comment by Veg gardener on June 15, 2008 at 2:00pm

use gralic sprayers or try and control bugs via hand

Comment by Athen on June 11, 2008 at 7:42pm

Hi folks. Athen is my name and I'm a permie from Ballarat. I thought I would share a comment I heard from a friend one time. My friend suggested that the best spray to use on any garden pests would be best made from that pest in question. He thought that nothing would be more off puting to pest insects than the death stench of your own speices.
What do others think?

Comment by MuSeOnThElOoSe on June 10, 2008 at 8:11pm

Welcome and feel free, to start a 'discussion within the "Organic growing tips" forum!
Cheers
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