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Hello gardening friends. Welcome to Backyard Basics
You know you don't always have to use an insecticide out in the garden when you
see little problem
As a matter of fact, the best way to do it is to prevent the problems from coming along
And so you know how it is to grow squash, it' so hard to grow squash because of the squash vine borer
or other insects that get on your tomatoes or maybe in your flowerbeds
Here's something new. This is a little mesh material right here.. look at this
it's a very fine mesh
the moisture gets through, the sun gets through and
the breeze get through there too, but none of the insects get through there
When we planted our squash this year we put it over a little
frame in order to kind of keep it from
getting any of the squash vine borers in there. But you can wrap your tomato cage
you can do many things with this
I like it a whole lot. I think it's going to be a good replacement
for any pesticides and even the natural ones. You don't always want to use a
pesticide out there
One of the the other things that occurs when insects are there
It's the plant health. A plant that
is depleted, not in good health at all, growing in a poor soil, something of
that nature
...could be improved and more resistant to insect problems by proper
feeding
liquid fertilizers like these would be a good choice for you
working some into the ground in advance is an important thing. Having a nice
healthy soil
and then feeding the plants. That's very very important
Red spider are controlled easily by using the spray of seaweed under them
Spray under the leaves and you can prevent them. It's been a dry year
so you want to make sure that you do this because in a dry year
that's when the red spider mite becomes a big big problem
There are beneficial insects out there too. The braconid wasp has laid it's eggs
on some of the caterpillars
and they give very very good control. But when you spray the garden
these things aren't out there, so you don't want to spray. The green lace wing... this is
the one you see around the porch
beautiful little flyer. Well it has its larva
to do the eating for it. These are voracious eaters when they're young
and they go through there and will clean up many of the aphid problems and you'll
be able to see the little aphids are
dried out. Another things to do is to not use BT, bacillus thuringiensis - it comes under
many brand names -
in the garden. This is a way to upset the balance again
These butterflies that come through there
are just beautiful. But when you spray, for example, you doing some of the
caterpillars in the garden...
don't go out and spray the other areas where there are flowers or there are passion vine,
any of these things because
the larva of the butterfly are there, they're feeding on these leaves
and as a result you wipe out the butterflies in your garden and they're
such an important part of a garden
Just a beautiful part of the garden. So make sure that you don't use
the BT
unless you have to, and you wouldn't use it in the open areas - you use it mainly
in the vegetable garden. That's where I see the
most important place of using it. So prevention...
keeping the plants healthy using the mesh device like this
stopping the use of the BT out there and just
overall having vigorous, well adapted plants in the right season
and you shouldn't have any problems. For backyard basics,
I'm John Dromgoole. I'll see you next time