TheMondayGarden.com

Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
July 4, 2004, Issue 119

This is an all-natural, fully-biodegradable pest-control device. It didn’t come with a label so my fellow Master Gardner interns and I, who disturbed its nap, weren’t sure of its pedigree and gave it a wide berth.

Picture: Snake, later identified as a young Northern Water Snake, lounging at the edge of a pond at the Bartlett Arboretum in Stamford, CT, June 2004

Unlike snakes, garden-center pesticides (“‘cides” to Monday Garden readers) come with labels. However, store-bought ‘cides can be much more dangerous. Snakes, for example, do not cause cancer, no matter what you mix with them or the quantities involved. This statement will not be retracted in ten years because new findings show that snake residues have reached unacceptable levels in drinking water.

The Monday Garden, Eco-gardening at its best

June 26, 2005, Issue 170

I recently read Insects and Gardens: In Pursuit of a Garden Ecology, an outstanding book by Eric Grissell. The first two thirds of the book take you through what you’d like to know about the biology of your garden insects in an interesting, and understandable, way. If you’ve had the pleasure of reading Botany for Gardeners, you’ll re-read “Insects and Gardens” several times for all the same reasons.

Picture: Michael-the-cat investigates Eric Grissell’s book, “Insects and Gardens”.

It is a bug-eat-bug world: For me, the “gold” is in the last third of “Insects and Gardens” where the science gets applied to the garden. The book explains that it is literally a bug-eat-bug world. In nature, you very seldom see a long-term insect plague because insect populations are usually kept in check by food supply, other insects, birds, and the like. Imbalances tend to be short-term (unless caused by an alien invasive critter, like the Japanese beetle, which, of course, is a human-made problem, so it takes nature longer to fix it.). So what stops this process from working in the garden?

Eco-gardening is at its best in The Monday Garden
December 18, 2005, Issue 190

When we talk about preserving biodiversity by preserving our native plants, part of the reason is so that our native insects with specialized diets will have something to eat. This statement may puzzle the gardener who thinks that bites out of the roses are a bad thing. After all, who needs bugs? Yeah, some of the "bugs" pollinate the flowers so that we have fruits and vegetables, some till the soil, some make the honey, some spin the silk, and some break dead things down into their original components for re-use, but…well, who cares about the rest of them?

PICTURE: Left to their own devices, our wonderful native eastern white pines grow tall and straight. Sunset at the corner of Strawberry Hill and Hillandale, Stamford CT November 2005. view larger image

Our small creepy-crawlies actually come from several families. There are the eight-legged spiders and mites, the six-legged the insects, the zero-legged worms, the centipedes and millipedes with too many legs to count, the armor-plated pill-bugs (related to shrimp), and a whole host of microscopic guys. For our purposes, they are all "bugs", even if to a biologist "bug" means just one kind of "insect" and "spiders" aren't "insects"...

TheMondayGarden.com, Eco-gardening at its best

April 8, 2006, Issue 201

Sorry-- there no pretty picture today as there are no pretty pictures of killer cancers. If any of you are still using pesticides, or have neighbors that are doing so, please read this unedited email that I received from an old friend and my answer to him.

This is real. If you use pesticides, you are causing this to happen.

Sue, Hi. You mentioned that chemicals to kill weeds and a link to Lymphoma. I have just started treatment for Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Do you have any links to material that talks about the relationship to lymphoma? I have commented to my doctors that I have always had a physical reaction when my neighbors had their lawns treated. J

J -- I can't tell you how sorry I am to hear of your trouble. What is so shocking is that the industry and government have known for years about the pesticide - lymphoma link. Here are just a few references. Please stay in touch and my prayers for your complete recovery come with this email. Sue

To the readers: I found these links in 20 minutes. What will your kids find in the your lawn, the school yard and the park? What are your shoes tracking home to kill your cat?

"Pesticides" means anything that kills insects, non-insect bugs (e.g. spider mites), weeds and other perceived "pests". In the reports I read, weed killers were mentioned most often. So is a weed-free lawn worth killing your neighbors kid?

TheMondayGarden.com, Eco-gardening at its best

June 25, 2005, Issue 210

SUMMARY: There is no ethical justification for the use of pesticides, "natural" or otherwise, to make pretty flowers or velvety lawns. Further, pesticides, long-term, are not effective insect controls. Instead, learn good cultural practices, and foster nature's defense which include predator bugs.

A reader of TheMondayGarden.com wrote "I just recently had a orchid house built. Could you advise me how to get rid of the mealy bugs and scale? Is there a automatic system that can take care of this and what chemical do I use to get this under control?"

Picture: Ladybug on patrol at Southfield Park, Stamford CT June 2006.

Dear Reader: I can see that you're learning, like the rest of us, and I hope this will help you protect your health and that of your children, pets, and plants:

I don't use chemicals to kill plant bugs and urge others to refrain from doing so as well. Bugs are all-natural (albeit sometimes not native) and fully bio-degradable, never cause cancer, and are seldom poisonous. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for pesticides ("cides" to readers of TheMondayGarden.com).

The 'cides are dangerous because (1) they kill stuff, (2) they are not fully tested to make sure that they only kill what they are intended to kill, and (3) what testing is done assumes that the user is perfectly following an unrealistic set of directions under ideal working conditions.