Growing things without pesticides and chemicals means that sometimes you have to get creative when it comes to pest control.
Pesky little wire worms have taken a liking to the tomatoes in the hoophouse – they crawl inside the stems and suck up the nutrients that the plant needs to grow, eventually leading to their demise. Bummer! Usually they attack potatoes, but this is a rare case of them attacking tomatoes (how exciting?).
So Amy and Patrick found a creative solution online: stick whole carrots into the ground next to the tomatoes and hopefully ‘distract’ the worms into eating the carrots instead. Like so:
That’s step one (and it worked!). Step two is pulling up the carrots each day and pulling out the worms by hand!
It helps if you aren't squeamish! Then proceed to do this every day and hope for the best!
Afterwards (and after a thorough hand washing), we deserved a treat and ate peanut butter cups. I made them and I they were great, but this photo suggest otherwise! Maybe she's still thinking of worms...
-Colleen
No comments:
Post a Comment