Little bee drinking some water

Pest control was one of our top priorities, we used multiple methods to control pests. One method was planting buckwheat as a trap crop, another was leaving some of the wild mustard along the boarder of our garden to harbor beneficial insects. We also used a foliar application of home made pepper extract. everal pests were spotted in the garden but pest damage remained relatively low. Nathan provided the information below detailing the pests in our garden and pest control methods used throughout the semester. 

These Parasitic wasps are brutal when it comes to survival. There are many types.  Some 
are parasites to specific animals (mostly arthropods) while others may parasite a variety of animals.  I think the parasitic wasp above is Anomalon ejuncidum.  It’s a parasite of caterpillars and beetles… maybe even our precious ladybugs.  Most parasitic wasps lay eggs inside the host; the eggs hatch while the host is still alive and then eat their way out.

This guy is not welcome!

These are lady bug eggs on our lettuce.

Few harmful pests were found due to high diversity in our system. This guy is holding still waiting for a snack.

A young transplant was chewed in half from by a worm. We lost only 2 due to this issue. 

Very few plants were lost completely due to pest problems. Here is one that suffered damage on only a few leaves yet survived.

According to Wikipedia there are over 7000 species of long legged flies. Almost all of them have a beautiful iridescent metallic blue green body. The adults are predators of small animals and they’re also scavengers. There were plenty of these in our garden as well as in the sweet potatoes right next to our plot show in photo. 

Chop then let ingredients shown here simmer for 3-4 hours in 2 qts of water. Strain through coffee filter and you have active ingredient for your pesticide formulation. 

Allow for ingredient to chill to room temperature before pouring into plastic mixing bottle. Use about a 1:5 with water.  

Our buckwheat is going to work also attracting many beneficial insects. 

Using wood chips as mulch worked wonders. The picture below was taken just before adding a third layer of wood chips, the picture above was taken after. This is a major component to how we solved our dwarf transplant problems. Wood chips are great for storing and absorbing based on its site specific conditions.

The wood chips did a great job at suppressing weeds and holding in moisture. 

Reminder of what the beds looked like during construction. 

Just after transplanting but before adding wood chips. At this time we were watering more often and weeding more as well.

First harvest
Just in time for Thanksgiving!!

Oh hey carrots!

Here is a picture from when we first started mulching! After we placed wood chip mulch and hay, we really saw the plants sprout up since there was less weed competition.

Our intercropping spiral is really starting to take shape, here you see Swiss Chard, Kale, and Arugula! Also here you can really see the success of our roman in the bottom picture!

Things are looking good! Got some weeding done, as well our buckwheat is flowering!

The plots have been mulched with wood chips within the demonstration plots and hay between. Our buckwheat grew quickly and has begun flowering. Many transplants in the intercropped plots died so we planted a second wave of transplants. We have a pest problem, mostly affecting the Swiss Chard, so later this week a pepper extract pesticide will be applied to the plants. Overall the plants look great, especially the Romain Lettuce.

Our buckwheat is growing quickly and we had some carrots germinate that we had given up last month.

The transplants are looking good now, they have recovered from the stunting and have started to grow. We have been using about 1/2 tablespoon of the nature safe fertilizer on them every week and they seem to like it. We have been weeding once or twice a week but will be mulching with wood chips to help keep the weeds down. The plants seem to need extra water so a few times a week they get watered by hand. There have been fire ants all over our plot so we used some diatomaceous earth to deter them. Seems like a good start even though a little later than everyone else. With the temperatures still reaching the high seventies and low eighties our late plant time may give us an advantage. My hope is that once the lettuce is big enough to harvest it will have cooled down a little to slow the onset of bolting.

Nathan Rish 

Major: Agriculture Operation Management 

Minor: Organic sustainable crop production

Lucky for me I have two hometowns J Cedar Park TX. and Wewahitchka Florida

I want to have regional organic vegetable market that was home grown. learn intensive inter cropping and cover cropping methods to sustain cattle, horses, chickens, hogs, bees, vegetables, herbs, high pollen plants, and heavy nectar flow flowers.  

My farm is 24 acres I plan to do this one. The bees will be scattered around among st the other 100 acres with the nectar crops. 

One proven practice of cultural pest control is trap cropping, and we decided to use Buckwheat.

Romane is in the ground!! Transplants so far are a success, however, now is the time to be careful with these fragile babies!

Our Swiss Chard babies, we will be posting their progress. Grow little guys grow!!
 

We are experimenting with carrots as a trap crop! We decided to use a white string to show a clear path to exactly where we planted our carrot seeds, to be sure we do not accidentally pull out the seedlings when weeding. When the carrots begin to sprout they look very similar to thin blades of grass. 

This week the plants have been struggling due to over watering. We believe that other groups have been accidentally watering ours and have moved them away from the other groups plants to help this issue. Also Brianne transplanted some in a larger container also away from the other groups and this helped.

We have planted 120 Romain transplants for our monocropping demonstration and 120 assorted seeds of arugula, kale, and swiss chard. After mowing the plot we direct seeded carrots across the plot to separate our demonstrations and to use as a trap crop for pests.