These tips for gardeners go with the article “Finding Faith in the Garden.”
Butterflies:
Soil amendments I use often:
- Earthworm Castings and Diatomaceous Earth – I mix these two together (less DE than worm castings) and toss a small handful in the dirt before planting each plant to enrich the soil with extra support as my plants grow in their early stage of life.
- Maxi-Crop – I mix 2 capfuls with a gallon of water and pour this over the roots of each plant right before I put it in the soil.
- Ladybugs – Ladybugs love to eat aphids and other bugs. I purchase live ladybugs at the local feed store or nursery and release them onto my plants a few at a time. As larvae, they can eat 400 aphids in 3 weeks. So if you see a bug that looks like a thin black and red alligator, it’s probably a ladybug larvae. Don’t kill it!
Killing destructive insects:
- Insecticidal Soap (spray for small, soft-bodied insects such as aphids, spider mites, thrips, whitefly and mealybug). Mix 2.5 tablespoons of oil and 2.5 tablespoons of pure liquid soap (I use neem oil and Dr. Bonners pure castile peppermint soap ) with 1 gallon of distilled water, pour into spray bottle and spray the top and underside of leaves.
- Pinch them. I know this sounds gross, but with gardening gloves and a strong protective instinct for your plants, it’s not so bad. I use this method with squash bugs, aphids if they’ve gathered, fourlined bugs, and other beetles. Then I give it a good spray to remove remaining bugs. If they are tomato horn worms, they’re too big and gross to squish with my hands so I pick them off and either cut them with my spade, step on them or feed them to my neighbor’s chickens. (Do not mistake these for caterpillars of a butterfly. They are green with black and white stripes, little circles between the lines and a horn or spike at one end.)
