"phorbin" wrote in message
...

No one has said it this way, so I will.

There are three integrated subjects: Pests, soil, environment. If you
ignore any of these in considering this year's problems you may be beset
by them again next year.

Right. That's why we try to use as much organic matter in the soil as
possible. Raise our own seedlings or carefully choose well grown, insect
free ones from the Nursery in town. Blood and bone meals are now too costly
for us so we switched to 10-10-10, surfer and Ironite. The west garden, like
the other two, had lush beautiful plants until the WF and SPs infested them!


With regards to the pests, clearly what you've always done has failed or
is failing miserably.
The people you've posed the question to have all given their perspective
and many responses have been quite correct.

They may not answer what you see as the urgency of your situation, but
you would be served better by following up on some of them as part of an
overall plan.

The one consideration I'd like to present with regards to your
particular insect problem is pesticide resistance. If they are
resistant, the only long term practical solutions, are likely organic
ones.

Which organic ones since Pyrethrum and the hort' oils don't work.

With regards to the soil, iron is a micronutrient and unless something
is seriously out of whack with your land, you don't need it.

It's needed because the natural high calcium, the high PH prevents plants
from obtaining it. This is a poor limestone clay soil I have to work with.
It's naturally poor in nutrients and high in PH and calcium. That's another
reason I stopped using the bone meal for phosphorus and woodash for potash.
These organic products were adding to the problem. The cost of blood meal
for nitrogen put it out of reach now.

If this
year's analysis says you do, kelp as a soil amendment should answer the
issue with relatively little work and with 60 or so other micronutrients
as part of the package.

If you are going by an analysis done in years gone by, you need a new
one.

I just had a new one. Everything was fine again this time but nitrogen. They
recommended 5 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate per 1000 sq. ft. of garden or 1 to 1.5
lbs per 100ft of row. I was happy to see the PH at 7. We have no idea what
that would be in an organic product.


In response to your comment about organic matter in the soil I'd like to
say that the healthier the soil, the healthier the plants, the less
tendency for the plants to attract garden pests.

I've heard that since the 1960s and haven't found it to be true. Insects and
bugs will attack any plant they find that's part of their food preferences,
be it healthy or sickly and stressed. To them it's FOOD or part of their
reproductive cycle. That healthy squash will be as quickly infested by SVBs
as the sickly one in your neighbor's yard. That gorgeous Impatiens will be
as infested with spider mites as that half dead one on your friend's porch.
Insects and bugs don't discriminate and have no immunity to infestation.

If you've been consistently using both pesticides and herbicides over
the years, your garden's soil has probably lost some or much of the
biodiversity that builds soil, and when you build up the biodiversity
with compost each time you use the poisons, you kill it again.

There was no poisons in that garden. Why would I waste time and scarce
money spraying a new garden plot that never had a problem before and just
laid fallow for 2 years? It was gardened for one season, laid fallow for two
due to my accident, and planted this spring. I must have already posted this
10 times already. The two older gardens became infested AFTER the new
one,... but not with SPs, just the WF. One of the old gardens is now
totally infested with WF. The organic sprays were useless in that garden
also.