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Pests and predators [was Re: Tennessee sq ft-ers]

Square Foot Gardening List - http://www.flinet.com/~gallus/sqft.html

At 12:32 AM 3/25/00 -0500, Gary wrote,
[snip]

>My major fights the last two years have been with the Japanese beetles and 
>grasshoppers. The beetle traps seem to help a lot but some times I think 
>they just attract more beetles.

The traps are helpful, but for this very reason they must be placed AWAY 
from the garden.  Since Gary has a country property, it shouldn't be too 
hard to find a tree to hang a trap on that's at least a half-block from his 
patch.

Traps also must go out at the right time of year.  Late May through late 
June is right for most of the country.

JB's are almost no problem west of the Mississippi River, but they have 
established themselves in a few places beyond it.

>  The grasshoppers have almost got me back on the chemical sprays. In the 
> past I've not had any qualms about using every chemical known to man but 
> I'm trying to be as organic as possible now.

Good adjustment, Gary.  The older I get, the less willing I am to sling 
poisons around willy-nilly.  The vast majority of garden pest problems can 
be solved by nontoxic methods, but the gardener must be patient because 
integrated pest management (IPM) solutions don't take effect instantly like 
dropping a contact insecticide on a bug does.

Grasshopper populations fluctuate wildly from one year to the next.  I'm 
doing a big book on IPM for rangeland grasshoppers, and there is no silver 
bullet.  But a number of techniques can be combined to help keep these 
native insects at subeconomic levels (points below which the $$ damage they 
cause is tolerable).out West.

Doing what you can to increase local bird populations will help a great 
deal.  Many different bird species eat grasshoppers.

>  I'd like to try some chickens or guinei (sp) fowl for the hoppers, but 
> the wife says no to that idea. Plus we have a lot of foxes, so that would 
> just create more problems.

Yes, it would.  Just as planting vast monocultures of pine in the U.S. 
South was like hanging out the "All-You-Can-Eat Buffet" sign for the 
southern pine beetle and doing the same in the Pacific Northwest with 
Douglas-fir turned the same light on for the Douglas-fir tussock moth, vast 
cotton fields for the boll weevil, etc.

Gary has excess rabbits because local predator populations are not high 
enough to keep rabbits in balance.  Every advancement of suburban sprawl 
into former wild areas pinches native species dependent on woodland 
ecosystems to survive.

The white-tailed deer problem has reached epidemic proportions in many 
areas.  Extirpating the wolf from the United States by the early 1900's 
turns out not to have been such a groovy idea after all.  Naturally these 
deer are hungry.  Veggie gardens offer them low-cost food.  (We're talking 
the cost of the energy they must expend to "catch" this food.)

A couple years ago I did an interesting book on contraception in wildlife 
management for the part of my agency that's charged with minimizing damage 
to ag resources caused by wild animals.  It is possible to contracept deer 
via dart-gun injection, but it's expensive and impractical except in 
confined settings (e.g., a deer herd enclosed on corporate property).

Considering how most of us feel about "Bambi," solving America's deer 
problems is going to be a huge challenge.

--Janet
[wearing her USDA APHIS editor's hat]


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