Rainbow is right, where there is a winter, you have a season when nothing is growing and the bug population drops. That does not happen here. Something grows year round and bugs, pests and diseases are permanent fixtures.
I do try to use the least amount of pesticides I can get away with. I try to use water most of the time, because insecticidal soap, neem, oils, etc. they are still pesticides. Most people believe organic means pesticide free and that is just plain not true. The pesticides are different and short acting but they still have to have some toxicity or they would not work.
For people who have small gardens, every inch counts. I have to choose what plants I can grow well and like to eat, taste better fresh, and are relatively expensive to buy. I grow corn because I like corn and none of it goes to waste, but it takes up a lot of space. In that same area I could grow a whole lot more lettuce, beans, Swiss chard, radish and beets, but some of it, especially the lettuce will bolt before I can eat it all unless I only plant a few at a time in succession.
I need to grow heat and disease resistant cultivars that will do the best in my climate with the least amount of pesticides. Some things I just cannot grow because of persistent pests and diseases like phythoptora, nematodes, black rot, and rust. Others like Brandywine tomatoes, I can only grow in special conditions like sterile potting soil in pots off the ground and with a regular fungicide program.
If I want to reduce pesticides, even organic ones, I have to make different choices.
I choose to still use synthetic fertilizer because I still want to maximize yield on my small plot and organic fertilizers still have risks associated with them and they are not as efficient for my needs and they are very costly in a place where 90% of consumer goods need to be shipped in.
I don't believe that synthetic fertilizers kill soil organisms. It does make them lazy. Mother nature wastes nothing. If nitrogen is available the soil organisms will use it to feed themselves rather than waste energy making their own, like the plants, nitrogen is nitrogen, it is still a food source and it does not kill them. It does not harm the environment if only what is needed is applied whether that be a synthetic or organic fertilizer. Pesticides, and deep tilling that is what does kill organisms. Adding compost replenishes the organic matter that was lost when the plants were harvested. In a balanced ecosystem inputs and outputs need to be matched. When plants are harvested, we take resources out of the system and adding back organic materials compost for biomass and organic or synthetic fertilizer for volatile elements that are lost to the system through the air or leaching.
Conventionally farmed fields have fewer microorganisms per square inch than organic ones to start with. If both fields
are tilled, both have reductions in microbe populations. Conventional fields over time do increase the numbers of microorganisms per square inch but they never match the organic fields because they start out with fewer organisms to start with, that should not happen if it was true that conventional fertilizer was as bad as some people claim. Adding organic material as compost to conventional fields help. What really matters is balancing your crops so that one crop replaces or uses less of the nutrients of the previous crop. Home gardeners rarely practice crop rotation.
https://www.asm.org/index.php/88-news-ro ... ria-counts
Happy gardening in Hawaii. Gardens are where people grow.