The harmony of your garden

If you have your own garden, you are a happy person! You and your relatives created it with your own hands. Each flower, every vegetable plant in it is sown, planted and nurtured by you. They are like your children, and all together - your big family. The creation of a family and the creation of a garden is perhaps the true purpose of a person on Earth.

Like any family, any garden is growing, changing. Something new appears in it, something is aging and disappears. One thing in it suits you quite, the other - causes discontent, disagreement and desire to intervene and change. This is normal, this is life. But how often we forget about the interests of neighbors, which can be contrary to ours. And as rarely, we recall that the Earth is by no means inhabited by people and not only for a person created. And if we believe that we raised the garden exclusively for ourselves, we are deeply mistaken.

Thousands and thousands of a wide variety of animals living next to us claim to count this garden. With a careful examination, literally on each plant, the inconspicuous neighbors of our smaller ones or, in any case, traces of their life can be found. For us, the fruits, vegetables and flowers are grown - a source of aesthetic satisfaction, and often material well -being. For numerous insects, ticks, nematodes, slugs, all this is a plentiful power source, simply put - food. And it is difficult to judge who has the most “count” all these plants with their own - a variety of invertebrates that have been inhabited by the Earth for hundreds of millions of years, or we are representatives of the human race, who have realized themselves “kings of nature” only a couple of tens of thousands of years ago.

If we assume that everything sown and planted is exclusively our property, and a compromise, that is, “section” with invertebrate competitors is impossible - well, to enter the struggle with them. We are not the first, and we are not the last. We will only say that the upcoming actions are often called: the fight against plant pests. Although we prefer to call this endless lesson differently: plant protection from pests. After all, the plants themselves, as a rule, are not capable of this.

The fact is that in the process of prolonged selection of cultivated plants, a person was carried out in one direction: only those plants that were sweeter and more nutritious were preserved, possessed the most sugars, fats, protein, vitamins. Corps were rejected in which there were many poisonous, foul -smelling, difficult to digest substances - just those that in the wild help plants to independently defend themselves from numerous enemies. And it turned out that we conducted selection not only for ourselves, but also for our competitors from the world of nature. They received a “gift” from us and now with pleasure are pounced on delicious fruits and vegetables, but we are deprived of their initial natural protective properties.

In order to maintain at least part of the crop for ourselves, we are forced to wage an ongoing war, which often not only turns into trouble for nature, but also adversely affects our own health. After all, almost always the main weapon in this war is chemical. Everyone who has ever grown plants, at least once in despair, treated them with pesticides. It is very difficult to refrain from this when you see a “impudent” replenishment from the side of the vile “boys” on delicate, with love, with love, with love. Even those who are aware of the harmful consequences of the use of chemicals are resorted to such actions.

What to do? How to protect plants from "misfortune" and not harm your garden and yourself? It is important to choose the right strategy and find the correct tactical solutions of this problem. Our strategy is the creation of a harmonious garden. Tactics - not to interfere, but to help nature. The arsenal of its funds is extremely rich; We only need to use them for their own purposes.

The main motto when protecting plants should be the thesis: chemical treatment is an extreme measure. They resort to it only when all other ways to cope with the pest are exhausted. It is on this principle that all modern plant protection systems are being built. It is not necessary to completely stop chemical treatments. In many cases, it is enough to streamline the use of pesticides: use selectively acting systemic drugs, treat not the entire garden, but only a focus of damage and in those periods when useful species (including pollinators) are inactive. But before taking up the sprayer, think: will the views of “friends” with “enemies” views will cope on their own? And in any case, make efforts to preserve the useful inhabitants of the garden and attract new ones into it.

Around the clock in the beds and flower beds, on shrubs and trees there is a continuous hunt for our enemies. Swift parasitic and predatory insects, ticks and spiders tirelessly look for and destroy larvae and caterpillars, destroy the legions of tripps, aphids and ticks. Thoughtful toads are chosen in the evenings from under various shelters and leisurely eat disgusting slugs. It is important not to interfere with them, but even help, if possible.

Pure, free from extraneous vegetation, areas of land have always served as an ideal for a farmer. However, it turned out that it was precisely such gardens and gardens, which are the impoverished biological system, most vulnerable to pests. There is no one to resist them here, there is no one to limit the growth of their number. Meanwhile, it is known that useful insects and ticks often need a flower nectar and pollen. Such a nutritious top dressing prolongs their life, provides high fertility, and increases activity.

You can artificially create entire areas or curtains of honey plants, hooking them in a row or leaving them, along the fences, behind the gate. Sow, plant everywhere where it is possible, nectarostly blooming buckwheat, fatselia, sunflower, Donnik, as well as shrubs: rosehip, hawthorn, honeysuckle. Nektaronos can be sown simultaneously with basic crops and after they have risen.

I will give advice to those who grow cabbage and at the same time suffer from cabbage aphids. Among the plants of cabbage, umbrella plants are sown, such as dill. One such flowering plant can provide additional nutrition of beneficial webding and two -winged insects in an amount sufficient for the extermination of aphids on four hundred cabbage plants! And the flowering Ageratum with its pollen attracts predatory ticks, which, together with a cowstein cow, actively destroy dangerous herbivorous ticks.

There is an even more effective reception of attracting six -legged assistants to the garden. For this, cultures are treated with primal substances. For example, Canadian farmers twice over the summer spray fruit trees with solutions of yeast and reed sugar. For God's cows, golden-eyed and syrphide, whose larvae destroy aphids, it is still like our children sweet chups-chups. These insects actively fly to processed areas for laying eggs. Their abundance increases significantly, and the number of aphids, harmful larvae and caterpillars decreases sharply. Such lure treatments are quite acceptable in individual farms.

Mixed crops are all wider as a protective event. At the same time, the role of useful inhabitants increases in reducing the number of harmful ones. By placing planting late cabbage next to the early peas, one can contribute to the migration of actively moving natural enemies of aphids from peas to cabbage. As a result, the settlement of cabbage decreases by a third. Thus, the pea aphids that do not cause economic harm to the peas can contribute to the accumulation of enemies of cabbage aphids and the protection of cabbage.

Often in our desire to get rid of weeds, we are too much to bend the stick. After all, the weed is weed. Of course, we must take care so that they are not in the bed with vegetables. But in the fruit garden, an extraneous, in essence, the vegetation is even appropriate. According to Austrian researchers, the activity of parasites that affect the apple makeup in fruit gardens with rows, strongly overgrown with weeds, are many times stronger than in the same gardens in wrecked areas. The abundance of weeds creates a good fodder base for numerous premises, leaflets, scoop, and herbivorous bugs for the numerous harmless trees for fruit trees. It is to weeds that predators and parasites switch, leaving the processed apple trees and pears. Here they also fly from the surrounding areas after the end of the “chemical attack”.

Do not forget that butterflies live on many wild grassy plants. And what kind of garden without these “fluttering flowers”! Destroying all weed plants in the garden, we deprive the feed of the caterpillars, which, after pupation, should turn into butterflies. After all, only the caterpillars of dozens of butterflies feed on the only nettles: our first spring beauty is urticaria, a luxurious peacock eye, an admiral with red stripes on wings, bear. Two or three, even a dozen caterpillars in the bed or in the flower garden, is not yet a reason to take up the sprayer.

Attracting birds in the gardens so that they destroy harmful insects, almost the most ancient effective protective event. Immersing the bibs and hollows for small insectivorous birds provides reliable protection of the crop. We should not only forget that the nests for insectivorous birds should be placed at a certain distance from each other. One lights with more than is enough to preserve the harvest of apples in the personal plot, because a couple of tits has up to 14 chicks. And often over the summer, the female lay eggs twice. How many caterpillars need to be collected by fruit -hubs, larvae of flower lines, aphids, copper, to feed such a voracious "army"!

So, attracting and using numerous assistants, we will create a harmonious garden that can and should be admired and from which you can always benefit.

Sergey Izhevsky,
doct. Biol. sciences