by Greg Alder | Sep 6, 2024 | Fruit, Pests |
My goal is to see birds as garden teammates — as they eat insects that can be pests, such as aphids — and not as enemies as they peck the fruit on my trees. As far as my experience goes, the best way to accomplish this is to prevent birds from access to...
by Greg Alder | Jun 21, 2024 | Pests |
Last night I spoke with the Orange County chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers about dealing with pests of fruit trees, and they contributed so many ideas worth trying that I have to share a few. Squirrels Someone showed me a method that her husband developed...
by Greg Alder | May 10, 2024 | Pests |
Nature is comprised of a bunch of animals and plants together, eating one another, keeping one another in a semblance of balance. My yard is not nature. But in it I try to put the right animals and plants together such that they can live as happily and naturally as...
by Greg Alder | Oct 6, 2023 | Pests, Vegetables |
Never do today what you can pay your kids to do tomorrow. It is sage advice that has been passed down for millenia. Last week, I employed it. I had been running around the yard in pursuit of white butterflies, the ones that lay eggs on the leaves of plants in the...
by Greg Alder | Jun 24, 2023 | Pests, Vegetables |
One downside to the wet winter and cool spring we’ve had is that earwigs, pill bugs, slugs, and snails have found this weather heavenly, and they continue to munch on my vegetables even during these first days of summer. But I’ve got a few tricks up...
by Greg Alder | May 26, 2023 | Fruit, Pests |
I am not afraid of so-called fruit tree pests and diseases. They’re just critters who also like to feed on our fruit trees. I say “also” because they’re just like us, they’re looking for a tasty snack too. They don’t munch on our...
by Greg Alder | Nov 11, 2022 | Pests, Vegetables |
It had been a few years since I grew wheat so I sowed the ‘Pima Club’ variety with optimism last week. Then a flock of white-crowned sparrows arrived. I walked up to the bed as they fluttered off, and I found a fuzzy mess. It looked like they had scratched...
by Greg Alder | Jun 17, 2022 | Pests, Vegetables |
Over the past few summers, some of my vegetables have performed worse and worse because of damage from root knot nematodes. What are root knot nematodes? They’re microscopic worm-like creatures that live in the dirt and bore into the roots of plants and...
by Greg Alder | Aug 20, 2021 | Citrus, Fruit, Pests |
Back in the winter of 2015, a neighbor noted how poor my lime tree looked. She said her lemon tree didn’t have those “curly leaves” because she sprays it. A couple days later she brought over a blue bottle of the stuff she uses: Bayer Advanced...
by Greg Alder | May 28, 2021 | Fruit, Pests |
Earlier this spring, a friend from Fallbrook was visiting and he mentioned that his peach tree had had a lot of leaf curl last year but this year there was no infection. “I finally got the spraying right!” he said. Slowly, I said, “Those results might not be just...
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