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Mar 6, 2014 11:16 AM CST
Name: Claud
Water Valley, Ms (Zone 7b)
Charter ATP Member
Chelle, I remembered something I had forgotten. Common Pigweed is an ideal companion for anything bothered by cucumber beatles; if you already have pigweed in your garden. Cucumber beatles prefer it to just about anything so it makes a great trap crop for them. If you have a conventional garden and don't have pigweed, I don't recommend it because each pigweed plant produces a couple hundred thousand seeds. Very hard to get rid of as a lot of it is round-up resistant. However, it has a deep taproot and mines minerals from the soil which you can use to your advantage.

Redroot Pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus)

Let me try to explain my approach to insect and weed control. I don't try to kill the insects, I just don't want them to eat my vegetables. Most insects don't like garlic, hot pepper, or sage so I make a tea using powered garlic, red pepper, and sage and spray it on anything I don't want the insects to eat or lay eggs on. I use regular table molasses as a sticker for the spray. This works to confuse a number of insects and repel others. If the insect doesn't lay eggs on your plant it solves a lot of your insect problems.

If you notice my pictures above you'll see grass and weeds in the middle between the rows. Actually what it is is a combination trap crop and fertilizer. This is my only source of fertilizer. I let the grass and weeds grow in the middle. I don't spray the middles so the bugs think they are in heaven. When I mow the middles it destroys a lot of insects and their eggs. The grass and weed clippings decay and release their nutrients back into the soil. When it rains the grassy middles slow the water run off so more soaks in. I can go into my garden after a 3" downpour and not get muddy. It's nice. The plants put out roots into the middle and suck up the nutrient rich water. When you mow you've destroyed the insects home so follow the mowing with a tea spray to move them off your plants and back to the mowed middles. The weeds are happy, the plants are happy, the birds are having a feast so try not to feel sorry for the bugs.

My garden was a cow pasture for 30 years before it became a garden and is still surrounded on 4 sides by pasture. The only plant I removed was dock. All the dock roots were dug out when the rows were laid out and leveled. Bushels of dock root. When insects migrate from the pasture to the garden they find the same plants which were in the pasture and some stinking plants which some idiot sprays on a regular basis to keep them stinking.

After the plants are harvested the beds are allowed to over grow with grass and weeds . Then the beds are mowed and tilled. Rinse and repeat until you're ready to plant again. Normally 2 or 3 crops of weeds and grass are incorporated into the soil by planting time.

I built a disc hiller attachment for my tiller. This allows me to redo the beds with a little less effort. It also moves the soil from the middle up onto the beds where the plants can benefit from it.

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This year I'm trying several different varieties of Naturtiums, Petunias, and Marigolds to repel the bugs. I'll interplant a different variety on each row so I can see if a particular variety works better than others. If they do work, I also plan to make teas from the flowers and foilage.

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Best of luck with the pumkins and melons. Claud

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