Pests and Payoffs

So last week I mentioned how as organic farmers we’re always compromising. Specifically, we do our best to control pests without having to even use organic pesticide but when a good deal of our farm was at risk we bit the bullet and sprayed some PyGanic on the affected crops. To our great joy, this week we discovered that after only the one spray we were able to save our squash crop and eliminate the vast majority of the Colorado Potato Beetles on the farm (with mostly spot spraying damaged plants rather than spraying entire crops), without killing off all our wonderful beneficial insects. In other words, the best case scenario! Given this, we most likely won’t have to spray anything for the rest of the summer. Take a look at the difference in our squash plants. Before, they were struggling to survive through the assault of a beetle known as the squash or cucumber beetle, and now they’re thriving!

: June 30th

: July 10th

Now, there are so many insects on a farm that only an entomologist would be able to identify them all without years of working outside and learning bit by bit. So I’ll show some of the more common insects on the farm for you here:

: This is the evil squash bug, a large gray beetle which feeds on squash plants. Watch out though, there is a look alike with pointed shoulders that actually feeds on bugs like this. Look before you squish!

: This little orange and black beetle is a lightning bug (also known as the firefly.) Lampyridae are both pretty and beneficial!

: This white grasshopper-imitator is known as a leaf hopper, and they are harmful pests that will eat leaves. In fact, the whole family of grasshoppers are essentially locusts you don’t want around.

: A round ladybug. Their longer name is Ladybird Beetles, the various members of this species are carnivorous, feeding on aphids and other awful bugs you don’t want. Great to have around!

: Another Ladybug Larva. As they age, their colors change until they pupate and morph into their adult form.

: A Japanese Beetle. These neon green and brown bugs are invasive (as their name might suggest) and are harmful pests.

: This shiny black little one is a flea beetle. They’re a big cause of damage as they will eat a plant until it can’t recover! They don’t like the heat, but they arrive on the farm before anything carnivorous, making them an awful infestation to deal with.

: This is known as the 12 spotted lady bug, and is beneficial like all lady bugs

First Veggie Van run in 2014

I don’t want to end talking about bugs though, so I’ll talk more about payoffs. There are three other excel scholars, Andrew Goldberg, Alexa Gatti and Rachel Leister who have a plot out at the farm, and they’re specifically working toward making vegetables in the community more accessible through their veggie van project, where they bring fresh vegetables to residents of Easton at no charge, with donations accepted. The first run of this took place just this Thursday from 5-7 at Pine and 10th street, and they will be doing this each Thursday at these times for the rest of the summer. Community gardeners who would like to support them can donate food by leaving it in the cooler by the shed at LaFarm.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

Compromises

Small farms and organic farms have to make a lot of compromises. Some see not using industrial methods as a compromise of choosing the environment over production but that’s not the sort of compromise I’m talking about (and that isn’t so much of a struggle for me, where the choice seems obvious.) Rather, right now I’m talking about compromises of when we do have to use some of the more heavy-handed methods. When small farmers have to use a tractor instead of their draft horses for a job, or when all else has failed and organic pesticides are the only way to save a crop. The latter is happening to us at the farm right now.

: A mature Colorado Potato Beetle

: A larva of the Colorado Potato beetle, an awful bug that will annihilate Potatoes and some other nightshades like Eggplant. You don’t want this invasive species around!

We, and a lot of small organic farms, use what is called Integrated Pest Management at the farm. (for information on pest management strategies, look here) That means that spraying anything is our absolute last resort for managing pests. But unfortunately we have some nasty critters like the Colorado Potato Beetle, Squash Beetles, and Flea Beetles that are so well established here from a few years of less than perfect management strategies before Sarah got here that even intense crop rotation and other pest management has failed in defeating them in the last two years.

So we’ve been left with a lot of damage:

: June 30th

: Flea Beetle damage to Eggplant

This left us with nothing we could do besides spray something (organic of course), otherwise these crops will be completely lost. Spraying always risks killing beneficial insects like ladybugs and lacewings, but not spraying will increase the chances of these bad bugs not only ruining this year’s crop, but surviving years to come and continuing to destroy food.

PyGanic, an organic pesticide.

We chose to spray PyGanic, pictured at the right. Also, we stuck to the lowest concentration that we could that would kill the potato, squash, and flea beetles and least risk killing any beneficial insects. The damage on the potatoes has not yet gotten so out of hand that we needed to spray more than the plants affected, but given the ubiquitous damage done to our squash and eggplant, those crops had to be sprayed equally ubiquitously.

It’s unfortunate we had to spray this week, but we have to sometimes make compromises. I think about some of the huge sprayers I’ve seen, indiscriminately covering fields with fossil-fuel based pesticides that will kill more bees, butterflies, and even some birds more than they will the actual pests, and I remember that it’s better to make compromises than to give in.

-Joe Ingrao, Excel Scholar Summer 2014

Organic Pest Control Research at Lafayette College by Julia Seidenstein

Hi folk,

During the summer of 2011, Julia Seidenstein ’15 was a Mellon Scholar working at the Lafayette Community Garden and Student Farm. She focused on testing several pest control methodologies, many of them in Community Garden plots marked out with small flags.

Abstract: During the summer of 2010, much of the Lafayette College Garden had pest problems. Conventional farming uses pesticides and insecticides that kill the pests, and can also kill beneficial bugs and leave chemical residue on food and in the soil. This leads to possible health problems and pollution of water by run-off from farms. Organic pest control methodologies are different than those of conventional farming. During the growing season of 2011, organic pest control methods were implemented. Many of these methods showed positive results in reducing the amount of damage the pests caused. The results from the test plots and student garden of the 2011 summer growing season are to be discussed.

Here is her Bug Encyclopedia and here is her Implemented Organic Methods that she tried.