There can be nothing more disheartening than for a farmer to grow a beautiful crop until close to harvest time and watch it get destroyed before his eyes as a pest or disease obliterates it. We need to understand that we are working in a fallen world and we need to first and foremost be committed to pray over our crops and lands for God’s protection against pest and diseases, as well as doing things in a Godly order that would afford us with His protection (see the Biblical Keys in the Trainer's Reference Guide).

Living and Healthy Soils

Outside of the spiritual prayer and alignment coverings that God blesses us with, one of the most overlooked issues in pest management is living and healthy soils. It is within a healthy soil that we find the God created biological balances necessary for good, productive growth of plants and living organisms. Healthy plants have natural pest and disease resistance, but this only occurs when they are well fed and growing in healthy, living soils. The complexity of life inside the soil is a lifetime’s worth of work and discovery which is outside of the scope of this Vegetable Guide to even discuss. However it is important to say that we need a great diversity of living creatures to be present to have stable relationships between organisms that eat dead and living plant matter and the organisms that predate on them. Sterile fields and soils are very problematic as they encourage a flair up of pests and diseases that go completely unchecked because there are no natural predators to control these population explosions. Destroying one pest can also often wipe out all the beneficial predators, which in turn causes explosions of other pests or diseases. It is about managing this ecological balance as best possible. The best ways to improve and culture living soils are through applying high quality compost and God’s blanket, but the ecological balances required may take a few committed seasons in order to reap the rewards.

We encourage farmers to get to know their biological allies - frogs eat worms, flies, moths, slugs and snails; earthworms build soil structure and porosity; bees and butterflies are essential for pollination and therefore fruitset; ladybirds eat aphids; parasitoid wasps keep problematic caterpillars under control; spiders and birds are also excellent at keeping pests under control etc. The mindset that the garden must be “bare soil with no bugs or living creatures” is one that needs a radical adjustment before success can be achieved.

Rotations

Pests and diseases build up rapidly in the soil when the same crops, or families, are grown in the same soil year after year. It is imperative that the Fruit, Leaf and Root rotations are practiced every 6 months with vegetables, to ensure that these disease cycles are broken. This rotation will be quite successful in preventing pest and disease build up, with a full 12 month break in the design. Rotations within rotations also decrease the risk of disease accumulation even within the 6 month cycle. It is quite alarming to realise how many farmers are still practicing mono-cropping and don’t understand why their crops are so frequently under severe attack.

Regular Inspections

Farmers should do daily inspections on their crops to observe the incidence and damage caused by pests and disease, and implement good integrated pest management controls accordingly.

Handpicking and Henpecking

A very effective way of controlling large pests like caterpillars, beetles, snails and slugs is to handpick them, assuming it’s a small garden. It is easiest to find snails and slugs in the open at night. Chickens can also be put into the portion of the garden that you will be planting into for a few days to eat cutworms and other pests before planting.

Remove Diseased Leaves or Plants Immediately

It is recommended to prune off any infected shoots or simply uproot the diseased plant and throw it a long way from the garden, not leaving it in the rows or at the garden perimeter or with the compost materials. In this way you discourage the spread of the disease or pest infestation to neighbouring plants and can save a crop if caught early enough.

Traps and Deterrents

Pest traps draw pests away from the plants and can be in the form of light, smell or physical traps. A good example of a pest trap is to draw snails and slugs away from your plants by placing small cups, like old yoghurt cups, in the soil and putting 2cm of beer in them. The beer is strong smelling and the snails will drown in their drunken stupor. The cups need to be cleaned out daily and the beer should be replaced every few days. Placing smooth moist structures, like wooden planks, around susceptible plants can make harvesting slugs and snails easier as they seek refuge there during the daytime. Scarecrows or old cd’s tied above vegetables on fishing line can be effective at keeping away troublesome birds.

Repellents

Preventative measures are by far the best way to combat pests and diseases, as they stop outbreaks before they occur. If you have had a history with a particular pest in the field in the past, then you should apply repellents every 7-14 days to ensure they do not become a problem in the current season. Plants such as marigolds, petunias, lemongrass, basil, rosemary and mint, amongst many others, are great for repelling problem pests in the garden. These can be easily incorporated into the design of the garden, either in rows or at intervals, throughout the garden. Onion, chilli and garlic sprays are excellent pest repellent options. There are also many essential oil plants that have aromatic repellent properties including neem, orange, eucalyptus, lemongrass, lavender, sage, rosemary, thyme and clove oil. Many of the mixtures of repellents double up as control sprays.

Spot Spraying

Most people when they see a pest outbreak, will just go ahead and spray the whole field, which is really not the correct way to tackle pest incidence. It is preferable to spray affected areas as spot sprays to sort out problem areas, so that they don’t spread into the rest of the field. Remember that these sprays will most likely kill and repel both beneficial and non-beneficial organisms, so try to limit the ecological damage you can cause by limiting the spray coverage to affected areas. Spray infected areas with a fine nozzle spray in the late afternoon to prevent the plants from getting stressed. Do trial sprays of plants to ensure you have your mixtures correct and don’t cause unnecessary damage. Here are a few examples of hundreds of available concoctions: Soap sprays are good at controlling aphids, scale, thrips and mites. Spray directly onto all infested surfaces to ensure there is a full coverage on the surface of the insects. 2 teaspoons liquid soap per litre of water. Soap and Oil sprays are more effective as they combine both the effective agent of soap, with the surface coating effects of the oil, as well as some of the repellent properties to keep pests away for longer. Aphids, thrips, mealybugs, scale and whitefly breathe through their skin, so a surface coating of oil suffocates them. The strong smelling repellent properties from chilli, onion, garlic and other essential oil ingredients are incredibly effective at causing a hasty retreat of pests from the garden.

Option 1 – 1 teaspoon of liquid soap, 1 teaspoon of vinegar, 10ml canola or soya oil and 1 litre of water.

Option 2 – Crush 6 hot chilli peppers (or 2 tablespoons of chilli powder), 2 bulbs of garlic and an onion to a pulp, add a teaspoon of liquid soap, 2 teaspoons vegetable oil and a cup of warm water. Let is stand overnight, then strain out the solid particles and top this mixture up with water to make up a litre.

Option 3 – Neem oil (an extract from the Neem tree seed) has become the most widely utilised organic oil spray against caterpillars, aphids, mites, mealybugs and whiteflies. A simple spray onto the leaves of plants is enough to disrupt their feeding and lifecycle, and although not instantaneous it will kill pests. Neem oil sprays have also been found effective at deterring grasshoppers and also controlling powdery mildew. Neem oil does not harm beneficial insects. 1 teaspoon liquid soap, 2 teaspoons neem oil and 1 litre of water.

Milk Spray - Using diluted milk and water solutions have proven as effective against powdery mildew as commercial fungicides. Milk solutions are also effective against mosaic virus, blights and other fungal infections on squashes, tomato, cucumber and other crops. Mix 100ml of milk with 900ml of water.

Soap and Baking Soda

Baking Soda/Bicarb is very basic (high pH) and creates a hostile environment for fungal diseases like powdery mildew and early blight on potato, tomato and squashes. 1 teaspoon of liquid soap, 1 teaspoon of bicarb and 1 litre of water. Make sure you test spray before applying to the whole crop.

Bacillus thuringiensis - A commercial option is the use of Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt. Bt is a bacterium naturally present in the soil which secretes a toxin which is only harmful to certain insect larvae. Bt is sprayed as a biological insecticide onto the leaf surfaces of many plants and is an excellent biological control mechanism against certain insect pest larvae with no known side effects on other organisms. Bt has to be eaten by the larvae in order to work, and once ingested it attacks the gut lining of the insect causing death.

Dusting

Woodash is very effective in preventing stalk borer and fall army worm infestations in maize/sweetcorn. Place a pinch of woodash down the funnel of every sweetcorn plant at knee high for “stalk borer” control. Post harvest stalk lodging is also very effective at exposing overwintering stalk borer to UV light and opportunistic feeders like guineafowl and chickens.

For the control of “Fall army worm” in all maize cultivars, apply a pinch of woodash every 2 weeks until the piping stage. This has been proven very effective even when neighbours have had complete failures with chemical control.

Diatomaceous earth is a fine chalk like powder made up of fossilised diatoms. When sprinkled on insect pests it sticks to them drawing the moisture away from their exoskeletons, causing dehydration and even death. It can also be broadcast around the base of valuable crops stems to act as a barrier to cutworm, snails and slugs.

Healthy people eat healthy plants which come from healthy soils which are living soils!!! We must do everything we can to encourage soil life, just like our heavenly Father has shown us in His Creation since the beginning.

In a biologically managed garden, imperfections in the vegetables must be tolerated for the greater good of what you are trying to achieve, but obviously not at the expense of success. Try your utmost to avoid the use of chemical pesticides which are harmful to both humans and the environment. Remember that to wipe out all the insects, fungi and bacteria is not the objective. Instead we are trying to encourage a healthy habitat for all living creatures to co-exist in balance. Ensure you practice good agronomic Farming God's Way practices, look after the soil and its biology, provide ideal environments for healthy plants, practice minimalistic pest control and avoid chemicals if at all possible.

5. Pest and Disease Management