Any advice for natural insecticide to get these guys off my tomatoes?
Also, I am getting tons of blossom end rot on my first and second harvest of tomatoes. It seems to be getting better now, but any advice on that. I have a few things working against me..some of which I can change next season....
1. I rushed the garden when I bought my new house..just dumped 3 tons of top soil into the garden and barely conditioned it with any top soil
2. I live on a cliff above the Chesapeake Bay. Even though the Bay is 100 feet below the cliff, I get seashells in my garden after major storms and a lot of erosion exposing the soil level or slightly below soil level roots of the tomato plants.
3. I didnt mulch the plants very well and Ive done no pest control other than releasing 500 lady bugs into the garden
any advice for anything I can do this season?
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rainbowgardener
- Super Green Thumb
- Posts: 25279
- Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
- Location: TN/GA 7b
Since you didn't get a response, here's a nice article about organic stinkbug control:
https://www.organicgardening.com/learn-a ... stink-bugs
I like the trap crop suggestion, though I can't quite see sweet corn as a sacrificial crop. But amaranth and okra would be fine with me to sacrifice. I grow velvetleaf as a trap crop for my leafminers and it works very well. The leafminers attack the velvet leaf and leave everything else alone. I just keep pulling the squiggly leaves off the velvet leaf and trashing them.
It also helps to grow catnip, garlic, marigold, mint, tansy in and around your garden, which helps to repel them.
You can try a garlic pepper spray or Neem oil.
The roly-polys, unless you have a major infestation of them, are generally detritovores, eating dead stuff and usually won't bother your live plants.
https://www.organicgardening.com/learn-a ... stink-bugs
I like the trap crop suggestion, though I can't quite see sweet corn as a sacrificial crop. But amaranth and okra would be fine with me to sacrifice. I grow velvetleaf as a trap crop for my leafminers and it works very well. The leafminers attack the velvet leaf and leave everything else alone. I just keep pulling the squiggly leaves off the velvet leaf and trashing them.
It also helps to grow catnip, garlic, marigold, mint, tansy in and around your garden, which helps to repel them.
You can try a garlic pepper spray or Neem oil.
The roly-polys, unless you have a major infestation of them, are generally detritovores, eating dead stuff and usually won't bother your live plants.