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Re: Steve's bugs

Stan,

I'm kind of lucky when it comes to predatory insects.  I live in an area
of "marginal" farmland and woods, where most of the agriculture is dairy
or thoroughbred horses.  The flatland is mostly cut for hay  (i.e. *not*
cultivated every year), where it is not too weedy, and the hills are
tree-covered.  There's lots of swampy areas and large mixture of native
vegetation.  We have two major soil types:  The hills are "unsorted
glacial deposit" (sand and rock mixed together) and the valleys are
flat, full of a volcanic mud created when Mt. Rainier lost a big chunk
of itselt about 5000 years ago.  All this variety means that we have
different habitants for both predatory and prey insects, and the lack of
good farmland means no pesticides are used that tend to kill of the
predators more effectively than the prey (pest) insects.

Therefore, all my predatory insects are "natural" and I don't have to
buy any of them.  My Scottish-descended grandmother would have
approved!  (I'm pretty cheap, too -- some would say excessively so!)

Suburban and urban environments, and areas with heavy production
agriculture are a different story.  The stress of those environments
affects predatory insects much more quickly than the prey.  The heavy
use of pesticides and the unavailability of habitats makes it hard to
keep a steady population of predators, even if they are purchased.

I can't recommend a specific book on the subject.  My information has
been gleaned from hundreds of sources over the years.  Organic Gardening
magazine has a 1-page insect feature every month that covers one insect
(predator or pest) in detail every month.  A library may have back
issues.  I don't know if they have ever compiled these into a book -- it
would be interesting.  Rodale's Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening is
another good source.

Note:  I am not a fanatical organic gardener.  But over the years I have
found that, in most cases, it's better to work with whatever's going on
in the garden than to always fight it.  I've gotten to the point where I
don't use any poisons anymore, even organic ones, except metaldehyde
slug baits. (Corry's Original English Formula in meal form, not pellets
-- dogs will eat the pellets and it will kill them in a hurry.  I don't
even use the meal around the house unless it is covered with a heavy
board that the dogs can't move.)

I had a gardening column proposal for a local newspaper once, but when I
found out they were going to cancel their other column I chose not to
accept their offer.  The lady that wrote it (the other column) depends
on it for her living.  I didn't need the money.  So I stick to  Usenet
and this list to fulfill my need to talk about gardening.   

Steve  (Maritime...)




Ross E Stanford wrote:
---snip
> of the garden de-bugging itself, and if it puts on a floor show at the
> same time, so much the better.  I have read in the catalogs about various
> bugs for sale.  Do they come back every year by themselves, or do you
> have to buy new bugs every year?
>      Remember, my sig says that I am cheap and lazy,  not good or
> knowledgeable.
>      I feel that this may be one area that I could really get into.  Of
> course my neighbors already think that I am nuts, so sitting out in the
> garden, checking out the bugs wouldn't seem inappropriate at all.
---snip
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