Battling Garden Pests

Effective BANDAIDS in the war against pepper attack....

Cutworm damage to sweet peppers.

Am I showing my age?  If you didn’t recognize the title of my post today, Pat Benatar dominated 80′s rock for a time with this song.  That’s how I’m feeling about my garden this morning.  The cutworms have declared war!  My peppers have been under attack the last few days and I want to share some of my organic arsenal for the fight ahead this summer.  First of all,

WHAT IS A CUTWORM?

image courtesy of Montana State University

They aren’t mean; just immature.  An immature MOTH, to be specific.  And like all growing teens, when they wake up hungry in the middle of the night and prowl around the fridge — I mean GARDEN — they can easily take a slice of nice, juicy plant branch like it was leftover pizza.  Preventative care is the best solution for those of us who don’t like to have pesticides of any kind in our landscape.

Bandages DO work as preventative measure.  Sort of.

HIT:  worms + metal = bad news  (in the CRAWLERS CHRONICLE anyway!) 

Yesterday I twirled copper wire around the base of my sweet peppers and other plants cutworms tend to attack. No new wounds this morning.  I’m not doing the victory dance just yet, though.  It’s also too little too late for the damage already done, but should encourage the fiends to find a new spot to munch where the grass is greener.  Another method used by many gardeners is aluminum foil.  I usually keep a bit of clean, used foil in my cart to re-purpose for the garden.

MYTH: you have to pull out the BIG guns for cutworms.

What organic method have you found effective for cutworms?

I also keep food grade diatomaceous earth on hand for just such an occasion.  This is a powder made of tiny marine fossils.  Just think of what it feels like to walk barefoot across razor sharp seashells.  That’s pretty much what those little varmints traverse when diatomaceous earth is sprinkled around the base of a plant.   They won’t cross the line twice.  (Wear a mask when putting out diatomaceous earth, though.  It’s equally as damaging to soft lung tissue if inhaled.  Also it must be re-applied after a rain, but since we’ve been in drought, my soaker hose doesn’t seem to mess up my moat of powder.)

Now that I’ve put out the land-mines for the cutworms, which I should have done a month ago, I guess I should apologize ahead of time to my neighbors, unwilling soldiers in the war when my cutworms march next door.

Too many peppers, too little time!

Farmer Brad, Jenny & Eva

Last week I told you I got the chance to visit Home Sweet Farm, settled by gentleman Farmer Brad and his adorable wife Jenny along with their two daughters and various beasts – both tame and not-so-much – including horses, dogs, and chickens.  Everyone at Home Sweet Farm not only pitches in with chores,  they are multi-multi-taskers.  Even the chickens do more than just their regular chicken stuff.  They are an integral spoke in Brad’s wheel of pest control.

Grasshopper control at Home Sweet Farm.

At my house, I use I.P.M.   I usually pick off the grasshoppers and relocate them…..to the trashcan.  (Sorry.  They should have gone to my neighbor’s house for supper!)  When I picked up a grasshopper -  the bain of typical farmers - at Home Sweet Farm,  Brad told me I was holding lunch for the hen-party!  No chemical pesticides allowed on this farm.  Pesticides are usually non-specific, meaning they kill anything.  The balance of life sways violently in one direction and the whole thing gets even more out of kilter.  But what if the chickens are a little hungry, say, without as much food GIVEN to them?  Instead, they’ll munch on grasshoppers.  Once there aren’t as many grasshoppers, the supplemental food can be ramped back up.  Now, that means Farmer Brad and Jenny have to pay attention to what’s going on at the farm where they “grow righteous food.”  The reason it truly IS righteous is because they DO pay attention.  Broad spectrum pesticides are often the lazy man’s way out.  All life is a wonderful system with the potential of imbalance.  Sometimes all it needs is a little LESS of something on one side to get the scales back where they need to be, not MORE heaped onto it.  I’m not saying I’ve never been guilty of being lazy, I’m just hoping I remember the importance of the systemic balance next time I’m tempted to reach for Rx in a spray bottle.

Okay,  off the soap box and back on to the scales.  The reason I went to see Farmer Brad?  Peppers. TONS of ‘em.  His great-grandfather – “Great Papa” Joseph DeFino – immigrated from Italy to Des Moines, Iowa by way of Argentina.  We are trying to hunt down exactly where he got them, but Great Papa DeFino brought thin-skinned sweet pepper seeds to this country, either from Italy or Argentina, for using in traditional Italian dishes.  When Brad and Jenny went full-time into farming, he asked his uncle for those family favorite peppers seeds, which they call ‘DeFino’s Sweet’ pepper.

'DeFino's Sweet' pepper bush

When he showed me the pepper bushes, I was amazed.  Peppers in the Texas heat are known as the rabbits of the gardening world when it comes to being prolific, but these were makin’ babies all over!   And apparently they are just as rampant in their procreation up Nawth.  Because of the relatively short growing season in Des Moines, veggies have to get down to business quickly.  However, these keep producing till frost for us, which means a L-O-N-G time enjoying peppers for Home Sweet Farm C.S.A. members.  Brad picked a pepper for me that was just blushing from green to red and we munched on it, right out in the field.  It was delicious!  He told me one of his memories of eating the pepper was going down into the basement at his Nana’s house in Des Moines and getting some of her blanched vinegar peppers.  They spread them on good ‘ole hard crust home-made Italian bread or put them into salads when fresh peppers were no longer available.  Instead of giving all your extra sweet bell peppers away, try this recipe Farmer Brad sent for YOU to enjoy.  Or send me YOUR FAVORITE PEPPER RECIPE to share!

HIT

Blanched Vinegar Peppers  By Lucretia Cimino (my Nana)

INGREDIENTS: red & green sweet peppers, ½ cup vinegar, ½ cup water, garlic cloves, red hot peppers, olive oil, salt/pepper

Wash and sweet peppers in half.  Blanch in boiling water for a few minutes.  Pack peppers loosely into jars.  To each quart jar, add 1 to 2 cloves of garlic, 1 small red hot pepper, 1 tsp oil, and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Fill jars with hot vinegar and water solution.  Seal jars.  Let set a week or two before serving.

MYTH: Giving away all your sweet peppers fresh. Instead, pick a peck for PICKLED PEPPERS!