Squash vine borers. They gave me the full shock & awe attack this year. We got a few zucchinis and some patty pan squash, but they killed them, the pumpkins (?!), even the spaghetti squash. BT was a little over my budget so I had to settle for shoveling some dirt and compost over the trailers, but in the end the borers won. Good news - they don't like Hokkaido winter squash, Black Futsu, Moon and Stars watermelons or, best of all, the Charentais melons! Well, at least, not so far. I've never raised any of these before and I'm eager to see if we like them, so the bugs can have their damned old zukes. Planting Four O'Clocks in the same hills with the cucumbers seems to be working fairly well, the cucumber beetles have nibbled a bit but haven't killed any cukes yet. Tomatoes have done well, Chip 'n Dale (the resident chipmunk tribe) have hollowed out a few that were close to the ground, but that's fine with me. I don't mind sharing. A big part of my goal of a no-kill garden is to find plants we like that the pests don't, then I don't even have to deal with them. May have found some winners. I hope you all have had good luck, too.
We are always battling slugs so that we can have a chance at harvesting something out of our garden. They love the tops of starter plants like squash and pumpkin and do all kinds of damage through most of the growing season. I kill as many as I can and turn them into compost. So maybe I am really the evil red and black bastard.
why would you even consider using BT if your doing a no kill garden?? ya cant kill an call it a no kill,, can you???
Good point. The no kill is an eventual goal, but I'd like to get to eat a little produce while I'm trying to figure out how to do it.
Ever think how those poor africans without the use of pesticides ever manage to cultivate anything, while hauling their water in jugs. We've actually got it easy, plus if you have any cash in your pocket you can always eat with the help of the local supermarkets. They do it all with backbreaking use of hoes while toting their water in jugs.
Yes, they have it hard. I carried water to my plants last year, but I only had tomatos and peppers and about ten pumpkin vines. It isn't bad work if you don't get in a rush - but I don't have a garden/farm big enough to support us like the Africans you mentioned. As for bugs, I'm sure that if we depended on what we raised for our only food, we'd be in the garden in shifts picking and killing bugs. That, or turn some kind of poultry loose in the garden and keep an eye on them to make sure they ate the bugs but not the garden. As for backs, I'm off tomorrow to the neurosurgeon to get mine repaired, it's showing the wear and tear I've put on it. Back to gardening - as I said, the no-kill idea is a goal but I'm not there yet, I expect it will take several years to do it. I'm experimenting with different varieties of plants to find some we like to eat, but the bugs don't. I may never get to that ideal goal, but it won't be for lack of trying. I'm finding that, generally speaking, heirloom vegetables seem the least appealing to our local leaf munchers. The asparagus beans and Japanese squash have done well so far, and a second planting of the beans appears to be doing well despite the heat this time of year. The Charentais melons look nice and have minimal bug damage to the plants, none to the melons so far. All the peppers and tomatos did well. Maybe I need to stick with "foreign" varieties. The pole beans and summer squash took most of the damage. We're happy enough with the asparagus beans to forget the other green beans, what I need to find is a summer squash that is vine-borer resistant. Maybe there's a companion plant that would help, I don't know.
Your working towards an admirable goal. But sometimes as a gardener you just have to allow yourself to throw one of those nasty snails on a rock and watch it crack. That's definitely not no kill.
