A vegetable garden - battling with the worms ( the bad green guys)
SteemIt Community Garden Journal Challenge - January (With Steem-Bounty)
@simplymike whose post I linked above is running a contest. Please do check it out and give her some love.
Below are a few pictures of our vegetable garden. We planted okra and spinach and did get a spinach harvest one or two times but then the worms started to crawl in and soon ate many leaves and left eggs. Spraying insecticides was out of the question because for one thing we do not like to use the poisonous sprays and spinach is leafy green and so we won't be able to consume it, once sprayed.
Manually plucking off the affected leaves is what we are trying to do now. Also, using cow dung manure helps it to grow. Next time, we plan to plant the colorful Marigold flowers alongside because we read on a farmer's forum that it helps keep the pests away.
You can see the leaves have been eaten.
The spinach seeds were dropped beside the okra and so there is little space between the two plants and that was also a big mistake.
That's the okra flower. It is also known as ladies finger or 'Vendakka' in our place
Images - sayee
That's the price one pays for not using chemicals in the garden. I'm fighting pests each year, but I refuse to use chemicals :0)
I assume you're dealing with caterpillars? You could try distracting them by planting herbs with a strong scent around your veggies, or maybe spray the veggies with a herbal extract. I'm not sure which herbs work against it - I know most bugs don't like the scent of garlic, so that's what I generally use to spray my plants with.
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Garlic, that's great. I will try that too and herbal spray sounds good.
You can use a natural dish soap mixed w water and spray them. It will help keep the bugs away, not affect the plants, or poison you. That is what i use. I started having the same issue on my collard greens. Nice plants, have a wonderful day.
Thanks a lot. I will try it. Good day to you too