Plant Partners for Pest Control

Plant Partners for Pest Control

Plant Partners for Pest Control
    Companion planting is a long-held tradition with backyard gardeners. Some things just go good together. Not just on the plate and on your tongue, but growing in the garden. There are many reasons people plant certain things together: reducing pests, better pollination and to improve soil fertility.
    The Native Americans did this when they planted the "Three Sisters" garden. Corn, beans, and squash made up the trio and those same three, along with game, were the mainstay of their diet. The cool thing is that the three not only benefit each other when planted together, but they are also a nutritious combination in a meal. Not to mention delicious!
    The corn is planted first, followed by the beans a couple of weeks later. By that time the corn is a few inches high and won’t be pulled over by the vining tendril the bean sprout puts out. That new tendril doesn’t have any leaves on it for a while, ensuring that it doesn’t shade the corn. After the beans and corn are doing good, you can plant pumpkins to cover the ground all around the other two. The wide leaves of the squash keep the moisture in and the weeds from sprouting.
    Since summer is here the bugs have moved into the garden. Stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs, squash vine borers, and pickleworms all seem to be thriving. There's not a whole lot still growing in my garden between the deer eating all the things I was actually trying to keep going and the heat. It looks like I am mostly done for the summer. But that doesn't mean I am just going to let the bugs go wild.
    My preferred way of pest control is hand-picking. But that is not always the easiest or most appealing method. If you have a very big garden then that won't really be a feasible way to keep all of the pests off your vegetables.
    In the past couple of years, I have learned more about trap crops. This is a plant that you grow that will attract the bugs away from the plants you want to harvest from. It ends up being a sacrifice plant that is just there to lessen the damage done to the main crops.
    If I had remembered trap crops when I was planning the spring garden, I would have planted Blue Hubbard squash about three to four weeks ahead of my preferred squash variety. Let's say I wanted to grow a whole lot of straight-neck yellow squash to make Sweet Pickled Yellow Squash. Just as soon as the soil was warm enough for squash, I should have planted a bunch of Blue Hubbard on the edge of the garden or at least a few feet away from where I will plant yellow squash. Then four weeks later planted the hills and rows of yellow squash.
    The Blue Hubbard Squash would have lured the Squash bugs and Squash Vine Borers away from my yellow squash. I would have probably had a better harvest. Instead, I only got enough squash for a dozen pints. In my opinion, you should still keep an eye out for bugs and hand-pick any that you can reach. Most bugs are slower, dumber, and softer when young, so catch them early to keep them from proliferating.
    Sunflowers are not only pretty to look at, but they make a great trap for some bugs. I first recognized sunflowers as a trap crop when I saw the leaf-footed bugs gathering there in the mornings. There would be a dozen or more all gathered on the seed heads of dry sunflowers. I don't know why they like to gather there; it looks like there's nothing to eat. But they do and if you sneak up on them you can kill several with one whack when you forcefully smash the whole thing between your hands.
    There are a couple of negatives to this method. The bugs that get away will recognize you as a threat next time and your hands will stink like stink bugs. The smell is much worse than the idea of the actual dead bug. My friend Melissa at Momma G Farms uses two flip-flops on her hands to smash them. That's brilliant!
    Knowing that this worked got me to thinking about the other trap crops we could plant. The book “Plant Partners” by Jessica Walliser is a great resource for all kinds of companion planting. A lot of the combinations that people generally think of don’t have any scientific backing. But Jessica wrote a whole book on science-based companion planting strategies, and in the book, she highlights each plant partnership and the study data that helped come up with those perfect partners.
    There are plants to grow together that can accomplish anything from conditioning soil to weed management to biological control to pollination. Some of them just happen in the garden without our help. Just this spring I found a tomato hornworm that was carrying a bunch of cotesia wasp cocoons on the outside of its body. No doubt the amount of flowers in my garden attracted the wasps in the first place. The adult wasp spotted a hornworm feasting on my tomato plant and stopped to lay her eggs. These will eventually kill the hornworm, but not before they can pupate to make more wasps.
    The wasp laying eggs on the hornworm is just one example of biological control. Another of my favorites is planting Sweet Alyssum for aphid control. Sweet Alyssum is a great food source for both the syrphid flies and parasitic wasps, which both feed on aphids. So, if you have an aphid problem, plant some Sweet Alyssum.
    You really can’t go wrong with planting all kinds of flowers in the garden. They are beautiful, attract pollinators, many of them reseed themselves and the deer tend to leave them alone. If I don’t get the hot wire up around my garden soon, I am going to have to learn how to eat flowers! And it’s always nice to be able to have a bouquet for the table or a friend. Until next time, get outside and enjoy the wonder of nature!