This morning when I
walked into the living room, the television was on and set to the weather
channel. I sighed nostalgically as I
noticed that the temperature at my former home in the desert southwest was a
gorgeous seventy degrees. This was
glorious compared to the eighteen degrees I had stood in, shoveling snow, just
an hour before.
It then occurred to me that it’s almost time for early spring planting in that area. Home gardening was always very enjoyable for me, and this time of year was full of opportunities.
Even the organic ones. Sounds crazy, right? It’s actually not. Rather, plant a nice balance of flowers, herbs, and other vegetation and stand back. Flowers bring bugs, yes, but they bring several different types of bugs - including bugs that eat other bugs. All those bugs, in turn, bring hungry birds. Bonus! It’s all about having a good balance.
I’m not telling you to let them grow to their hearts’ content, but rather let a few grow until they start to flower, and pick them before they go to seed. Controlled growth is what we’re aiming for. The reason for this is that insects will often flock to weeds, choosing to gnaw on them before they approach your more important plantings.
For a long time I had tried various organic methods to control aphids on my concord grape vines. Then, one day, I gave up. Nothing was working, after all.
That year I had the
smallest aphid problem ever. Once I
stopped trying to control the population, ladybugs popped up from all over to
do the job for me. They helped keep the
balance, and I had a wonderful grape harvest, even giving grapes away to family
and friends.
I had always had bad luck with parsley. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get a nice bunch of it. Then, one day a swallowtail butterfly swooped in and laid her eggs. The larvae were voracious, and ate my parsley all the way down to the stems. I was sad, but since I was used to not having a good supply of parsley anyway, I walked away from the problem believing myself to be defeated once again. A few weeks later, the healthiest supply of parsley I had ever seen was growing where the caterpillars had done their work.
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