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Help please!
My husband and I started gardening 3 years ago. We currently live in Indianapolis, though both of us were raised in warmer areas; he’s from California and I am from Florida. This is not my first attempt at gardening. I’ve had a seasonal garden in Wichita some years ago so the ideas of planting and such at different times of the year isnt new to me. Our problem here in Indy is the pests. Grubs, meal worms, aphids, japanese beetles, moles, slugs, small roaches, white flies, squirrels, mosquitoes, ladybugs in such numbers they also eat the plants, robins, crows, blackbirds, starlings, mice, carpenter bees, huge black ants, cats (yes, the neighborhood cats are eating my tomatoes!) and insects I can only begin to guess at are in the garden. Of course I’ve seen these things before in gardening in Florida, but a simple organic spray and some traps was enough to get the problem under control.
We checked the soil, it’s a bit dense so I worked lawn clippings and mulch into it to make it less clay like. The soil is rich and we have had no need to fertilize. Plants grow quickly, and then die as the bugs eat them. The lettuce we tried to plant suffered the worst. And the yard (only 30×50 feet) has now become such a haven for insects it’s like walking through a fog to get to the garage. I sincerely have not seen so many bugs in one place in my life, and I have been all over the country. We seem to be feeding them! We hung japanese beetle traps this past year and literally caught *pounds* of bugs. We put pie tins of beer out for the slugs and caught hundreds, and they still covered one side of the house, and ate their way through the garden. The organic spray was good for a day, and then the bugs would return in full force, literally thousands of them at a glance. I’m right on the verge of salting the back yard and making a rock garden. The only plant that seems to do well with regular organic spraying is the rhubarb. The pest problem was so bad last year that I just gave up in August and let everything just go. I love to garden, and I love to cook with organically grown produce. The taste is so much better, and the health benefits are immeasureable. This is my contribution to a husband who works so hard to make our lives good, and to friends who have never experienced home grown food. Please help.
Thanks for your time!
Wow Veronica! You do have quite a problem there and I don’t think there’s just one fix – you’ll need to combine a few techniques. Reduce the number of harmful insects AND barrier your plants.
Try combinations of the above and see what works for you. I hope this helps and better luck this year!