Insects, fungus, mites, aphids... there are many threats to your plants that you might have to deal with. Here is an overview of common options for organic control methods.

Prevention is key

• Crop rotation prevents many, many problems.


• Companion planting. Planting marigolds in with your squash, cucumbers and pumpkins can keep away certain pests. And in my experience, a row of dill seems to attract ladybugs.


• Diversity is better than monoculture, even within the same type of plant. For instance, plant three varieties of potato instead of just one, so that if you get a blight or fungus, one or two of your varieties will probably be resistant.

Getting rid of big, visible bugs

• Hand-picking sounds tedious, but for large insects on a few favorite plants, it works really well. I have a friend that pays his young sons 5 cents for each live squash bug they can harvest off the pumpkin plant. Sounds like a good investment to me, and a fun kind of family competition in the garden! Well-practiced hand picking can devastate the populations of caterpillars on broccoli or cabbage in just a few minutes. It works, and you'll feel awfully clever once you learn where the bugs like to hide on the plant.

Slugs, the bane of many a garden

• It sounds bizarre, but if you leave (well cleaned) tunafish can, filled halfway with beer, in the garden overnight you'll often find it filled with dead slugs in the morning. Gross, but effective.
  
• Crushed eggshells or hair (human, dog, or cat) can stop slugs in their tracks. Spread either in a band around plant bases.


• Find and kill slugs when hand-picking other pests: A spray bottle with one part ammonia to two parts tap water will do the job. It's organic, but you still might be careful spraying around the leaves of tender plants.

Aphids, mites, and other little suckers

• A mixture of dish soap and water, sprayed onto affected plants, will kill aphids. Make sure to water the plants really well an hour or two ahead of time, to minimize the chance that the plant will suck up the soapy water that could potentially damage roots. Pick a soap that is phosphorus-free if possible.

Miscellaneous pests

• Spraying neem oil mixes onto your plants can kill a variety of pests. You can learn more here.


• Hot pepper waxes are a mix of capsaicin (an extract of cayenne pepper) and a waxy substance (like paraffin). Proponents of hot pepper wax say it is effective against aphids, spider mites, whiteflies, cabbage loopers and beet armyworms. I've never used it, but I certainly would give it a try if my garden was inundated with these types of pests and I couldn't use another (free) method like soapy water or hand picking.

Fungi, blight, and other mysterious problems

• One year, when I planted four varieties of tomato, I had two of those varieties succumb to a mysterious fruit-rotting problem, while the other two plants got off scot-free. Like I mentioned above, biodiversity can be the key here. Within reason, it is a good idea to hedge your bets with a couple varieties of a given type of plant - some will likely be resistant to whatever strikes your garden. Besides, it is fun to have different shapes, colors, or sizes of whatever you grow.


• Water in the early morning. This cuts down on fungus, blights, slugs, and even sometimes caterpillars. All these things like damp nights - so if you have dry plants at night, you'll see fewer pests. Watering in the early morning also saves water, which is great.

Did I miss a favorite tip or trick you use in your own garden? Share it with readers in the comments!

When my husband first began teaching, he was amazed at the number of textbook offers he got each semester - publishers who wanted him to review and rate existing textbooks. Some even wanted him to suggest ideas for new ones, and they offered to help him submit manuscripts. "This is ridiculous!" he would often say. "Why would I write my own textbook when there are so many others out there?"

After a few years of teaching, however, he began to see why this idea was so appealing. One book might have excellent information in one area, but another area was under-represented or poor; if he was teaching a complex course, he'd have to pool together information from several texts. And some information seemed to have been left out of all the books completely; in those cases, he'd assign reading from periodicals or even (gasp!) websites.

R. J. Ruppenthal began writing Fresh Food From Small Spaces: The Square Inch Gardener's Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting and Sprouting after a similar experience. In the introduction, he writes, "I know firsthand of the need for this book, because I have been searching for it for many years." An staunch urbanite, he wanted to know how he could make the most of the space he had to grow usable, practical foods - enough for his family, and perhaps a little left over to share, barter or sell. (He got points in my book for using "grow" in a more expansive sense: not just fruits and vegetables but also honey, sprouts, eggs and mushrooms.) So he set to work doing research, and he came up with this collection of information.

The problem with the book, then, is exactly what makes it so useful to Ruppenthal: it's very personal. Not personal in the way of gardening memoirs, which use narrative to communicate important information; personal in the way of prioritizing according to fancy. For instance, there's a small section on cold frames (that actually references this book) but the author stops there, casually mentioning that you can buy a kit for around $100 online before moving on. When he comes to self-watering planters, however, he spends several pages detailing exactly how to make your own - and includes several down-and-dirty photos of what looks like a project he completed in his garage. Most of the ideas in this book suffer from similarly thin research; the three "t's" of vertical gardening (terracing, trellising and tumbling) are described in very little detail and without enough information to actually do it yourself, without getting some more books. A section on beekeeping is admittedly drawn from "books and from others who have raised bees and told me about it." The compost section contains both too much detail (charts detailing the N-P-K content of common manures) and too little (an interesting story about a sheet composting that takes a nosedive when the author admits he "cannot yet report on the results because the pile is still decomposing.") It reads very much like a personal journal, which it more useful at some times than others. The presence of many stock photos also erodes some of his credibility; it's as if he cobbled all of this information together to make a presentation, and he waited until the night before to look for visual aids.

The good points: There is a lot of good, solid information about fruit-bearing plants, both where to buy them and what to expect from them. Again, there is a disproportionate amount of information about pollination, but that was obviously a personal interest of his. The section on sprouting is also quite useful, including several recipe ideas to use up your bounty. The chapter about fermented foods (yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, etc.) is interesting, although I found Nourishing Traditions a far more thorough and well-researched source of information. I also thought the chapter titled "Survival During Resource Shortages" was both wise and timely.

This book falls into the category of books whose first chapter really, really excited me, but it failed to deliver. It could have been much more successful as a compendium of resources and data - where to find out more information about topics that interest you - or as a meandering memoir of a city-dweller with a conscience and a strict budget. I wish I could have read that book. But maybe that means I'll have to write it myself!

I took my son and wife to the Piper's Creek Orchard at Seattle's Carkeek Park recently. It's an old pioneer orchard, recently saved from the blackberries and partially restored by volunteers. Almost every tree is a different kind of historic apple or pear or quince.

Anyway, as we walked in, this dude's lying there on his back in the middle of the orchard. Was he barefoot? My mind may have embellished the memory. But he looked all the world like Johnny Appleseed.

It turns out he's the protector of this orchard and an expert on heirloom apples. He gives free advice to anyone who asks. I asked about my apple problems. He made me feel better.

Here's what Johnny said: The nylon booties I've been using did keep out the apple maggot. He says I got away with my mid-June application this year because the spring was about two weeks late. Generally I should apply the nylon booties June 1. However, it doesn't keep out the coddling moth (or of course the scab). To keep out the moth, he's experimenting with dipping the booties in BT prior to their application. (BT is an organic pest control method, a bacteria that various bugs eat which causes them to lose their appetite and then starve to death.)

The apple maggot tunnels all over the place and destroys the apple. That pest was stopped by my booties.

However the coddling moth, after penetrating my booties, tunneled straight to the core via a visible hole and straight back out again. This is consistent with what I found when I dug into one of those troubled apples a few weeks ago. You can cut around that kind of damage.

The crop is saved! Thanks, Johnny.