Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

94 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard

“pests” descend upon our gardens each year trying to

beat us to the harvest. Like thousands of generations

of gardeners before you, you will have to battle these

invaders. Here are a few tips:

Gophers can take out an entire big plant over-

night by eating the roots out from under it. Gopher

Spurge doesn’t kill them, but if you grow it, when

you find a hole you can break off the top of a plant

and stick it sticky-stem side down into the hole. The

gophers can’t stand the smell or taste of the plant fluid.

But of all the various ways I’ve tried to deal with them

over the years, the most effective I’ve found are these

battery-powered stakes you can drive into the ground

that emit high-frequency whines every few minutes,

which rodents cannot stand. The effective range of

these is about 50 square feet, so one in the middle of

your garden will cover you.

Moles are insectivores, and actually aerate the

soil. Voles, on the other hand, are truly wicked and

like to do such things as nipping off your pea plants

about an inch from the ground, when they’re tall and

healthy and about to bloom. You can protect them

with plastic bottles cut into cylinders placed around

young plants.

As to bug pests, there are basically two kinds you

have to worry about: chewing insects and sucking

bugs. The chewers munch up the leaves, and these

include grasshoppers, tomato worms, cabbageworms,

and various beetles. Suckers feed like mosquitoes,

sticking straw-like nozzles into the leaves and stems

and sucking out the juices. These include leafhoppers,

squash bugs, red spiders, and aphids. There are four

ways to deal with these pesky bugs: barriers, bug-

repelling plants, predators, and insecticides.

I mentioned bug-repelling plants earlier under

“Companion Planting.” Insectivorous predators in-

clude birds, predatory insects, and spiders, and I’ll

talk about them next. A birdbath will encourage the

right kind of birds to catch bugs in your garden (don’t

put up a bird feeder near your garden, however, or

you’ll attract birds that will also want to eat your corn

and sunflower seeds!). Barriers are useful against

maggots, cutworms, and grubs. These can be as simple

as toilet paper rolls for collars around seedlings.

As for insecticides, you can make your own from

garlic, onions, peppers, or painted daisies, steeped in

hot water like tea and used in a spray bottle. Be sure

to spray the underside of the leaves as well as the

tops. Ants HATE red pepper. Mix equal parts cay-

enne pepper and powdered Borax and spread it in a

line along doorways, windows, or wherever the ants

come into the house. If this still doesn’t work, the

best commercial treatments are pyrethrum and roten-

one. Always wear rubber gloves to handle pesticides.

Slugs and snails can be eliminated by laying out

small containers (like cat food cans) of beer. These

slimy terrestrial mollusks love beer, but they really

can’t handle alcohol!

In addition to visible pests, there are also micro-

scopic disease organisms that attack garden plants,

such as fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Symptoms of these

show up as discolored, spotted, wilted, curled, or dis-

torted leaves. Once a plant is infected, there’s not much

you can do other than pull it up and burn it. Your best

preventative is to plant disease-resistant plants, and

treated seeds. There are several organic fungicides that

can be can be sprayed on un-infected plants just as

with insecticides. Some of these are Zerlate, Zincate,

and Karbam White. Read the labels carefully, and fol-

low the instructions.

Beneficial Bugs

Some of your most

effective allies against

chewing and sucking bug

pests are predatory in-

sects and spiders. My fa-

vorites are praying man-

tises and the big tiger-

striped orb-spinning gar-

den spiders (Argiopes).

Mantises are ferocious hunt-

ers of grasshoppers, locusts, and

caterpiggles. You can buy mantis egg cases, but only

if you can get them locally, because a different mi-

croclimate will kill them. They will hatch out about

100 hungry babies. Garden spiders just seem to show

up in a flourishing garden, and capture many flying

insects; you can encourage them by providing tall

bamboo poles, spaced 2’-3’apart,

for them to spin their webs be-

tween. Ladybug beetles

come refrigerated in con-

tainers from feed and gar-

den stores, and are great

for aphids—release them

in stages. The larvae eat

about 10 times as many

aphids as the prettier

adults. Keep a bowl of

water on your garden al-

tar for your insect friends.

Bees and butterflies aren’t predators, of course.

Their benefit is in pollinating. Plant plenty of flowers

and these enchanting little creatures will flock to your

garden and bring it to life. Lemon balm will attract

bees, and morning glories will draw hummingbirds.

Earthworms burrow through the soil, helping to aer-

ate and drain excess water. Their castings are rich with

soil nutrients, which feed the plants. I recommend

going to a bait store and buying a few cans of worms,

and turning them loose in the freshly tilled earth be-

fore you plant. They love compost heaps and are es-

pecially crazy about coffee grounds.

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