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Pesticides destroy the natural balance: “Insects and Gardens” uses an analogy to the mammal world that goes sort of like this: Imagine a grassy plain capable of feeding 200 antelopes, and imagine that 200 antelopes are the right size population to feed a pride of 10 lions. Everything stays in balance because you have just enough lions keep the antelope population from growing too big and over-grazing. As for the lions, many predators voluntarily control their population in tune with the food supply; otherwise famine controls their numbers for them.

Now suppose some human says “look, those horrible antelope are eating my grass – get rid of them!” The human then has an airplane gas the antelopes. The gas kills 9 out of 10 antelopes; the gas also kills 9 of 10 lions.

This leaves 20 antelopes and one lion-- a breeding population of antelopes, and a very lonely lion. In time, the plain will be over-grazed by the, now, 400 antelopes, and no lions.

This is exactly what happens in the garden. If you look at a leaf infested with aphids, you’ll also see some aphid eaters, like ladybugs, hanging about, and you’ll see that the proportions are like those of the lions and the antelopes. If you watch for a few weeks, you’ll see that it can take the predators awhile to show up, and eat their way through the prey population. You’ll also notice that a wise ladybug leaves a few aphids for her kids.

When you use pesticides in the garden, it’s just like gassing the antelopes and lions. This is why the farmers that use pesticides have to keep using more and more of them. They have destroyed nature’s defenses. Farmers at least have the justification that they are growing the nation’s food.

Pictures: Ladybugs, to a biologist, are actually beetles, not bugs. Whatever. They come in many colors, and are one of the best known garden warrior-guards. There are many, many other predator insects including lace-wings, praying mantis, certain wasps, and flies, and many diminutive critters whose names are not household words. Pictured here is a selection of ladybugs making more ladybugs in a mugwort patch behind the First Presbyterian parking lot in Stamford, CT, early June, 2005. The last picture: the ladybug pupa stage has a shiny ladybug-colored, plated cover and has several barnacle-like strings at the top to attach to a leaf or other structure. Late June, Mill River, Stamford, CT 2005.

Diversification is balance: What “Insects and Gardens” says, and what makes prefect sense, is: diversify, diversify, diversify. (Funny, the stock brokers say the same thing).

You’ve heard it before: do not create monocultures by planting large numbers of the same plant or plant family near each other. This creates a field day for insect and diseases that love that plant family.

Mr. Grissell goes a step further and says create an ideal bug-predator habitat by diversifying everything in your garden – not just type of plant. Make part of the garden dry, part moist, part shady, part sunny. Let some of the soil be sandy, some high-clay. Plant some short things, and some tall things; add plants with wide leaves and some with narrow ones. Plant things that stay green all year, and things that die to the ground in winter. By my lights, this will also lead to a more attractive garden where you can grow a greater range of plants.

Stop the clean up campaign! Then, the author really “breaks the rules”. A main-stay of non-chemical gardening has been sanitation. Clean up, clean up, clean up: remove the dead plant litter that bugs could hide in, or lay eggs in, particular over the winter. He says (gasp) leave a good part of the mess in place! It is more important to create favorable habitat for your good bugs. Mr. Grissell says a lot more, so I highly recommend the book.

Meanwhile, I’ve been trying one of his recommendations, mulching in place, in my mother’s garden and it works like a charm. I don’t know if it has reduced the bug population much since the bugs are really only a problem when the starlings don’t eat enough of the Japanese beetle grubs in that horrible monoculture known as a “lawn” (but that’s another story for another issue some time). However, it works wonders for this gardener in other ways.

Pictures: immature ladybugs look like tiny dragons. Like the adults, they have a variety of markings. First picture: Lady bug larva on an ailanthus leaf; size is about ¼”. Second picture: Lady bug larva policing an Asian bittersweet flower, Mill River, at Scalzi Park, Stamford, CT June 2005

Mulching in place works: Mulching in place has proved good for the gardeners, and the robins (grin). The idea is that whatever you cut or pull up, just chop it into small pieces, and drop it right back on the soil. So, when I did the spring pruning, the twigs and branches were cut into 2 to 3” pieces and left in place. Now that the ox-eyed daisies, daffodils, buttercups and iris are done flowering for the year, the dead-headed stems are getting chopped up and are filling in the holes in the garden made by last-minute transplants. The weeds are cut up and dropped.

No more lugging bio-mass around: The first differences noticed were: no more adding of buckets of organic material a week to an already over-flowing, neglected compost pile, and no more buying and lugging heavy bales of mulch. This improved the backaches no end, and saved money. The time required to do the chopping was mostly made up by the chores skipped. Further, the chopping is less strenuous than lugging (or heaven-forbid, compost-heap churning) so you don’t get as tired, particularly on a hot day, even if it takes a bit more time.

Better mulch mix: Next, I noticed that the short twigs and stalks made great mulch, alone or mixed with other things. The crossing twig fragments make a kind of protective mat over the ground. You can actually step on it lightly once or twice a season, without badly compacting the soil, which makes reaching into the odd places easier. (And, again easier on the back!) The rough texture of the twigs prevents the mulch from over-compacting and creating a “mulch roof” that encourages water run off. Not having to break the mulch up periodically is another chore (and backache) saved.

The robins like it. Robins are one of the best things for a garden. In return for water, a share of the fruit and berries, a couple earthworms, and a quiet place to nest, they eat a wide variety of veggie-eating insects include beetle grubs, caterpillars, and grasshoppers. Robins do not cause cancer under any cicumstance. My mother reported that the robins were delighted with the supply of “just right” twigs for making their spring nests.

Growing plants for their mulch. What I’m noticing now is that I’m looking at some plants as beneficial mulch producers. The “straw” from the stems of the dead-headed ox-eyed daisies and buttercups now makes them even more of an asset in the garden. Before, I’d say “nice but you have to deadhead or they get weedy”. Now, I say, “nice and great for mulching straw after the flowers are done.”

What not to mulch in place: What doesn’t go right back in the garden is roots of weeds that might start growing again, and unwanted seeds of weeds and of plants that are already over-abundant.

Pictures: a bucket full of ox-eyed daisy seed heads for disposal; the daisy stalks ready for chopping; newly chopped stalks in place.

Examples:

Don’t want the seeds: The garden is chock-full of ox-eyed daisies, so unless most of the flowers are deadhead, pulling up excess little daisies is a chore. Also, the daisy heads deteriorate rapidly so they’re not a visual plus in the garden. Of course, leave a few for the birds, but the rest of the daisy flower stems are best cut to the ground as quickly as possible after flowering, before the seeds can ripen. With “mulch in place”, the seed heads go in a bucket for disposal and the wonderful straw of the stems goes back in the garden in 2” pieces.

Want the seeds: The garden’s buttercup collection is still being built, so the seeds are wanted. But like the daisies, the post-flowering buttercups stalks don’t look that good, and besides, where the new buttercups are wanted is not next to the existing ones where the seeds would naturally fall. So the flower stalks are not cut until the seeds are ripe. Then the stems are cut to the ground in bunches, and taken to where new buttercups are wanted. The seeds are sown in place by stripped them off the stems or by cutting off the stem ends. The stems, themselves, then become straw-mulch wherever it is needed. If the birds want their share of the seeds, they know where to find them.

Good Winter-interest: The cone flowers, astilbe, and hosta (the seed producing hostas, that is) are great for winter interest and great for the birds. (Did you know that little song birds are partial to hosta seeds?) These stalks are left in place until spring. In spring, the winter-dried stalks made a very nice, twiggy straw mulch.

PS: If you’re going to buy Insects and Gardens: In Pursuit of a Garden Ecology, or Botany for Gardeners, please do it through the links on this site and help support The Monday Garden.

Picture: Michael looking at Caril Goodpasture’s awesome pictures in “Insects and Gardens” by Eric Grissell.