Re: Insects and healthy plants

January 26, 2004

I do the same thing - I always let the pigweed grow around my beds (and

occasionally in them, if they're not too big) - all the bugs go for THEM,

not my veggies. Used to work REALLY well on .... hmmmmm ... I think it

was flea beetles.

At 05:09 PM 1/26/04 -0500, you wrote:

> I mentioned to the man at the garden store that sold organic fertilizers and

> he said that insects will NOT eat a healthy garden plant. So those potato

> bugs lived happily and well all summer in our veggie garden.

>

> Judith Alta

MFJ

Any moment in which you feel like dancing is a perfect moment.

January 26, 2004

We've gardened organically for about 7 of the 10 years here. All we've had

is tomato hornworms on tomatillos which we never grew since. Got rid of

plants and tomatoes weren't touched. Disease, after a hot spell got powdery

mildew on cucumbers, then squash. Vitamin deficiency part of that we

adjusted soil next year.

Wanita

> I mentioned to the man at the garden store that sold organic fertilizers

and

> he said that insects will NOT eat a healthy garden plant. So those potato

> bugs lived happily and well all summer in our veggie garden.

>

> Judith Alta

>

> Another example of this comes from the tenet that 'every form of life

> has its ow n form of food' and that 'insects eat sick plants not

> healthy plants' and yet, insects eat our food plants. By raising the

> brix of the produce, making nutritional elements readily available to

> the plant, more complex sugars are made by the plant, LONG molecules

> that insects cannot digest. When these long molecules are in the sap,

> the plant IS food for humans and the insects leave it alone. I got a

> good lecture from Phil Callahan's assistant at ACRES this year about

> this one.

>

> -Allan

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