December 1st, 2023 Pest Report

 

Last January I wrote a long(ish) article about our intended strategy for keeping bugs out of our gardens. (You can read about it here.)  And through the Spring and Summer we got the bulk of the tactical plans that came of these thoughts implemented. This article is merely a recap of what happened and can be skipped by most people as trivial.

Our Lettuce Row Covers
kept the rodents away.

Our rodent population this past year was small. Our main concern, after putting in rows of barrier plants and using those few idea we had laying around to keep them off the plants, became moles and voles. These didn't really do much damage to the crops, but appears in every row as a small hole near the end of each row and some few places where the wee beasties had to come up for air. Our no-till growing strategy meant there was deep enough soft ground that these two sorts of animals were able to keep their tunnels much deeper in the dirt. Moles eat worms, of which there were plenty of Compost Worms (Red Wrigglers) above the level of the soil, and Earth Worms (mostly black worms) under the compost layer in the soil. (I did see one fairly large furry little Moles in one of the Compost piles when I moved it with the tractor. Our tangle of Bassets caught it and there was some happy carnage for a little bit.) Voles eat vegetables, mostly root systems. We didn't have much plant predations, though there might have been a little, so Voles weren't really much of a problem. We didn't really see many Moles or Voles, but when we did find an open hole we dropped two or three Mole Bait Pellets into the open hole to keep the numbers down where we could without adding a lot of pesticides to the soil. I saw an open hole this morning, so they are still out there.

We had a bit of a Chipmunk problem in late Spring and I had to shoot them where I could with my 22lr rifle. I got good at it and the chipmunks were mostly under control through the Summer. We had few squirrels, but this Fall there were plenty coming onto the Farm to gather Walnuts and I let them be. The squirrels aren't living on the farm but they are put on notice. We also had a rabbit at the back of the Market Garden. He's a slippery little guy and avoids us. One day I was working in the garden and he walked out of the brambles to lay in the sun. I told him he ought not lay out where I could see him because I definetly would shoot him if I could, so he agreed to lay out somewhere else and we never really had any rabbit troubles this year. I carried my rifle around with me for two months in late Spring and this solved the problem of Chipmunks for the most part. 

We had no Japanese Beetles this year, which were a concern a few years ago, but toward the end of the Summer we did have a few common Cucumber Beetles in amongst the squash and bean plants. These were the only insects that our efforts did little about. We planted many barrier and attractive plants in long rows throughout the gardens and this seemed to do the trick. We had a few Flea Beetles in the Potatoes early on, but a fine kitchen sifter and some diatomaceous Earth took care of it. We applied nematodes to the rows in early Summer and I don't know what effect they might have had. Our only real problem was Flea Beetles. In the bottom half of Summer we had an explosion of Flea Beetle populations throughout the gardens. There were millions of these highly destructive bugs which might have done some real damage to the crop plants. But they were more attracted to the Nasturtiums than anything else and their millions were wiped out in one application of Diatomaceous Earth. Two days after they showed up and turned the Nasturtiums black, and ate nearly every leaf, the plants began to recover. By Summer's end the plants were looking robust and covered in flowers once more. 

There were few slugs in the gardens to worry about. We did find them around the house and in the wood piles. We also saw some Strawberry predation, though this might have been Field Rats or Chipmunks. There wasn't enough trouble to address, so we let it go. Our first year of the new Strawberries was great, next year we'll put in three times the number. 

Our little Farm Stand

Bottom line, the strategies we adopted last Winter worked pretty well. The only real trouble was the Flea Beetle explosion, which we saw immediately, got on top of, and solved easily since the combination of an attractive plant and an organic solution worked easily.  The rodent populations will continue to be a problems since clearing territory only gives outsiders an opportunity. I suppose that vigilance is the price of lettuce and hunting them out seems the only way to control the damage. We'll likely try adding barrier plants to the edges of the Farm next Spring. I'm thinking allium types will give us a crop plant that rodents don't seem to want to cross through might do the trick. 

Winter is setting in at Creekside Farm. Our Christmas lights are up and we can't wait to find a tree to dirty up the Farmhouse. Our Farm is looking pretty good and we're pretty sure of the future, so long as things continue as they are. Life here is good, if not easy.

I read a story a very long time ago about the Laziest Man on Earth. Born on a farm he thought it would be better for him to avoid all of that hard work by doing the easier work of thinking, so he went to school. That he became a mathematician isn't the moral of his story though. I learned from this that thinking things through, when you have the time to do it, was one very good way to avoid as much of the physical labor as one could while still being a farmer. Our pest controlling "dogmatic" thoughts of last Winter seemed to have not been a waste of time.