Patricia Ruggiero wrote:
Not having firsthand experience of any of these problems I feel any
contribution I make must be extremely tentative, but I can't help
wondering if one way to defeat these attacks with at least the more
compact plants like egg plants and bush cucurbits might not be to leave
them permanently covered and do the pollinating artificially. Where
crops are grown in glasshouses this has often proved feasible if
tedious.
Beans would not even need pollinating as they can do it for themselves.
I realize that plastic film covers might prove lethal in hot areas, but
it is perfectly possible to use a fine nylon netting which will keep out
insects and allow entry to air and rain.
On a different aspect, as to how those primitive cultivators might have
achieved a reasonable return from their three sisters planting in spite
of pests, I think we must remember they were dealing with a very nearly
pristine ecosystem in which there were many natural controls on pests,
not the least of which was the wide diffusion of their food plants,
quite unlike their concentration in modern cropping. This would have
given individual plots a good chance of not being found, or only
suffering maybe one of the possible pests at one time. I don't doubt
pest numbers were also kept down by a great host of predators, whose
lives were then not constantly disrupted by ill-considered spraying with
lethal chemicals. The other difference would be the contraction in the
variety of food sources available to the insects which have in many
cases been greatly reduced by our selectivity, which has lead us to
destroy quite a lot of their food supplies under the guise of weeds,
while concentrating just a few species we fancy ourselves and which we
don't care to share.
And finally, it seems to me almost all pest problems have a cycle,
nearly every year I have noticed one or more pests become unusually
numerous and this may last one or two seasons, after which they usually
fall back to their previous more manageable level. I guess people in the
US may just be particularly unlucky to have a maximum of several pests
all in one year.
A cycle very obvious in my garden is in snail numbers. A few years ago
they were present in disastrous numbers, and then for several seasons
they went right down. This year they are on the rise once more and I
have had to get out my traps again and start going round their favourite
hibernating places with lethal intent!.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ. Pictures of our garden at:-
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/cherie1/Garden/TonyandMoira/index.htm
NEW PICTURES AND DIAGRAMS ADDED 20/Feb/2005
This strikes me as very true Moira. In my locallity there are not many
growing my variety of crops and this may contribute to my paucity of insect
problems. My main pests are mammals and birds. And I suppose these could
have ended up on the menu of aboriginal Americans as some do on mine.
john
