"Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees, please."
-- Joni Mitchell, "Big Yellow Taxi"
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| Spider and web in an apple tree 8-16-14 |
"Fortunately, every pest has a predator,
and we can use that natural food chain to our advantage."
-- Debbie Hadley,
"How to Attract Beneficial Insects
to Control Garden Pests," About.com
"Spiders -- so needed and yet so misunderstood."
-- Donna Lynn Hope, Willow
I practice all natural, organic pest control in my garden.
I hand-pull the weeds.
I rely on a small fence to keep out the rabbits.
I use natural remedies -- like milk to combat the weird fungus on my zucchini leaves -- whenever I can.
I let the bees and butterflies pollinate and do whatever else bees and butterflies do.
When the baby praying Mantises hatched in the shrubbery out front, I hand-delivered five of them to the garden and rested them on my tomato plants so they could grow up strong and fat eating the aphids and broccoli bugs.
I let Mother Nature handle the rest of the insects.
She's doing a good job. The garden plants are thriving and so far nothing is nibbling at them before we get the chance.
Yesterday I found this spider hanging out on her web in the branches of one of my apple trees.
I don't love spiders, in my house anyway. But I have no problem at all with them loitering in my garden or in "Two Tree Orchard" (i.e. my tiny two dwarf apple trees).
After I checked out the spider, I checked on the apples. They looked pretty good. Red. Ripening. Plentiful.
A few apples had a few spots, but I'm not worried about it. I can cut those out with a paring knife.
No pests is a good thing, whether I'm making tomato sandwiches, zucchini bread, basil pesto or homemade applesauce.
That's why Mother Nature heads up my garden staff.
She works hard.
I try not to be a pest.
