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Garden Pests and Diseases

The best defense against garden damage from pests and diseases is a long-term program of soil building. Healthy soil will produce healthy, resistant plants.

When insects (like the Japanese beetle) and diseases do strike, it doesn't foretell the end of your garden, it's just a message that something isn't in balance. The next step is to get reliable information?

Pest damage may appear before you see the culprits themselves. Look under the leaves or go out at night with a flashlight to catch nocturnal varmints, such as slugs, at work. Those white butterflies hovering over your vegetable garden may well be there to lay eggs on broccoli and cabbage that will produce well-camouflaged cabbageworms.

There are many organic sprays available for treating pests and diseases in plants. In general, we feel that these should be weapons of last resort since they will also kill other creatures, many of which are very beneficial in the garden. If you feel it is essential to use such materials, then you will need to read up on which material is best to use. A read of a good catalogue from an organic supplier will often be sufficient guide. There are also various sprays that can be made from plants growing in the garden. In general, you have to be very knowledgeable before using these, since they are often more harmful to wildlife than the sprays you can buy. If you want to consider alternatives to spraying, then the following are some options:

• Camomile and garlic
Add a crushed garlic clove and a small handful of camomile flowers to half a litre of water that has just been boiled. Cover and leave to soak for 12 hours. This will make an excellent tonic for plants that will help them to fight pests and diseases.

• Mixed and companion planting
Pests and diseases spread much more easily when lots of plants of the same species are growing together. Try to mix your plants more - you will find that this will also help to produce higher overall yields from your ground. By planting aromatic plants amongst your other plants you will find that the incidence of pests and diseases will fall. Camomile, garlic and many of the Mediterranean herbs are very useful here.

• Encourage the wildlife
There are many creatures who would love to be able to share your garden with you, and who would repay you by eating many of the pests in your garden. Put n a pond, for example, and any frogs who live in it will eat up lots of slugs. Hedgehogs and slow worms will also eat their fair share of slugs and snails. Thrushes are also useful here, though they will also want to share your fruit with you.

• Biological control
There are now many companies who supply parasitic creatures that you can introduce into your garden or greenhouse to control pests. I do have some reluctance to use these, especially if they are not native species. However, these parasites are very specific to the pest they are intended to control, and are therefore much safer in the environment than organic sprays.

• Gardening techniques
There are many little tricks you can use in order to reduce the incidence of pests and diseases. Leaving the main carrot sowing until early June, for example, will reduce the risk of rootfly. Laying rhubarb leaves on the ground will attract slugs to shelter there - it is then a simple matter to collect the slugs up and move them on to wherever you want to move them. Any good book on organic gardening will include many of these techniques. It is very important to try and be as tidy as possible in the garden. Leaving things lying around, for example, will give slugs a place to shelter. Great if you are prepared to check all these places each day - but not if you have just been lazy and are not prepared to check. If you do get a disease in the garden, then try to treat it as soon as possible. Remove the diseased material, burning it if absolutely necessary.

There are many plant diseases, but rarely do they get so severe in the home garden that gardeners do anything about them. The most common are fungi that turn the bottom leaves of tomato plants blotchy and spotted, then yellow. These can be treated with a spray. Another common tomato problem is blossom end rot, which causes the end of the tomato to turn black. Uneven watering, not disease, is the culprit here. Home gardeners can control both pests and diseases through good gardening practices.

Rotate crops- particularly potatoes and tomatoes- so that problems that reside in the soil don't come back year after year. Clean out the garden and till the soil in fall so insects don't winter over in plant materials. Dispose of infected plants away from the garden, and burn them if you can.

Try to stay out of the garden when it is wet, since you can spread diseases from plant to plant via moisture. Some gardeners use a strategy of starting with the least drastic measure- knocking bugs into soapy water, for example- and use other methods only as necessary.