With reference to Colorado beetles, in my experience the best approach is to scout the plants for beetles every two or three days and squish them. Start early because the adults emerge first and they're not too bad, but they produce lots of young which do the worst damage. I don't use a pesticide because the beetles are cleverer than I am; potatoes and their predecessor species have been developing pesticides for, say, 500,000 years. The beetles have overcome these pesticides one by one in a sort of arms race. Where potatoes are grown in bulk, including parts of Michigan, Colorado beetles have overcome every pesticide tried on them; the more they are challenged, the more they develop resistance. It's not surprising that the beetles can overcome artificial pesticides developed these last 50 years. So I don't bother with pesticides and I squish 'em. For more species of insect pests, the most useful are the umpteen species of minute wasps, ranging from 1/10 inch to 1/50 inch long. You never see them but they do great work parasitizing pest insect eggs and larvae. The best way to encourage them is to grow the small-flower plants they like most. #1 is boneset, #2 is sweet alyssum, and somewhere in the top ten is Riddell's goldenrod. This is a slow solution. Similarly, doing ones best not to harm those black ground beetles is the slow-but-sure answer to slugs. Flee beetles on eggplant and brassicas, however, can only be stopped by using row covers on immature plants, which doesn't get rid of the beetles of course. So my advice is to think long term and hold off on the pesticides which, after all, kill as many beneficial insects as they do pests. Regards, Peter.

SVB are really a bugger to control. The adult looks like a wasp and is easily overlooked. She comes around during the day a little before the flowers bloom so covers do work. I suspect they find your plants by sight. Uncover at night, during blooming, and the pollinators (bees) will be there early in the morning. It is said that nasturtiums help if planted around the squash hills. I've tried it last year and it seemed to work but I've no real proof yet. Looks pretty though. SVB is the only pest that has tempted me to stray from strictly organic practices. It's very discouraging to see squash plants fail just when they really start to produce. I've found that planting them in a half whiskey barrel allows me to examine the plants easier. It keeps the leaves off the ground too. You can also wrap aluminum foil around the base of the stem with some of it buried by piling dirt up around it. Gotta do this early though. Last year, along with the nasturtiums, I built a four foot square mezzanine around the top of the whiskey barrel out of furring strips. Then screened it. It gave a flat platform for the vine to rest on. No vine borers last year even though I saw a couple lurking around. Eventually powdery mildew got 'em. But what a harvest! Best of luck.

You've opened a door that many want to chime in on. According to many, organics will not work in a container grow. I am hardheaded, and proceeded to do what many won't or can't do to make it work. Last year, i grew 40 some pepper plants, and some other stuff in my containers and was quite successful. If you are looking for more than one season, I reccomend using Al's mix - see the container gardening forum. If you are not going to try and grow more than one season with organics - you can do it, it will work, but it is more costly and time consuming than most gardners wish to stick with. As I said, I am hard headed and want challenges, and was able to do extremely well. Still here, OK here goes some of my .025 I mix my soil mix in two stages now. One is for first transplant, second is for fruiting and final transplant. Both are mixed well in advance - as much as 6 months or as few as 6 weeks depending on time availability and funds hee hee. I mix into huge totes and keep them around 68-74 degrees to let the microlife grow and develop. The containers I grow in are *mostly 8-14 gallon plastic nursery stock. With the weight of the containers while growing, they tend to settle into the ground quite a bit over the summer, and thats exactly what i want. I also do not really do more than trim the grass at the top level of the containers to prevent the sun from cooking the soillife and roots inside. I do use some 5 gallon buckets too, but those plants are severly root bound by seasons end. I use a blend of fertiloams red label, a very "woody and chunky" potting soil that is locally available for both of my mixes. For a 50 gallon batch I add the following. first mix 15 lbs of worm castings. 2 lbs green sand 2 lbs cottonseed meal 1 lbs blood meal 5 lbs bone meal - either steamed or not. 1 lbs kelp meal 5 lbs pelletized dolomite lime 1 bag composted cow manure Alot of folks stay away from the worm castings, but to introduce microlife, it's important. After mixing thoroughly, I make a "tea" from 1 gallon of spring water, 1/2 cup worm castings, 4 tablespoons of liquid fish ferts (alaska), and 2 tablespoons of non sulfured molasses. I put an air pump (aquarium) and stone in this, and bubble it until it foams hard - usually 12 to 16 hours. I mix this with another 4 gallons of either rain water or spring water and 1/4 cup molasses. This I add to the mix in the totes to lightly moisten, and mix thoroughly. I then cover the totes, and store them, turning lightly weekly and monitoring so that they do not go anaerobic on me. "hot mix" 5 lbs greensand 30 lbs worm castings 10 lbs bone meal 7 lbs cottonseed meal 5 lbs blood meal 5 lbs bat guano high pk 2 bage composted cow manure 3 lbs kelp meal 6 lbs pelletized dolomite lime 2 lbs grain limestone the mix part and tea is the same. first mix is for 1st transplant into 1 gallon containers, before this I use straight red label, second mix is for final transplant into large container. I add a few teas during growth, water daily unless rain, and put a mix of chunky shredded bark and alfalfa pellets on top to mulch with. Once a month or so, I water with a 2 table spoon molasses to 1 gallon water mix to enrich microlife. i have changed this mix several times, and will probably continue to do so. You don't have to get this involved, but without the microlife, the nutrients are not that available to the plant, and it will not flourish. I had mature peppers - even Bhuts in late June, early July. My garden planted peppers didn't really yield till later like mid August or so. I harvested over and over and over. Continously. it will work, but like I said, is expensive, and time consuming. My tomatoes and basil were enormous and yielded well into October. Next post I will attach some late season photos. Good luck. TiMo One added benefit is the use of the old seasons mix into my vegetable garden. In January, I could scrape off the leaf covering in the garden and still find enourmous amounts of worms at work breaking this down. This year, my garden should really rock. The greensand and bonemeal last well into the future, more so the greensand.

The only thing I've found to work with vine borers and cucumber beetles is row covers. Two summers ago I had basically no cucumber harvest and very little zucchini harvest, despite planting every 2 weeks. Last summer I covered winter squash, zucchini and cukes with row covers until the plants flowered - I even did a bit of hand pollinating to keep the plants covered longer, but that got old fast. I had a decent harvest of squash and cukes all summer long. I still had cucumber beetle issues, but no squash borers. I use spinosad, insecticidal soap, and Pyganic as a last resort. I keep bees and am very careful about what I spray. In the last few years there's been a push to use spinosad over BT as it's supposed to be more environmentally friendly, but it will kill bees for a few hours after it's sprayed, so I try to spray early in the day or when it's cloudy. I never spray flowering plants. Insecticidal soap can be very effective if you spray often enough to kill larvae. It only kills soft bodied insects so is safe around bees and beneficials. I only use Pyganic when I have a major infestation, such as the Japanese beetles that decimated part of my orchard. Or when I've reached the limit of applications with other pesticides. I think the organic rules only allow me to spray insecticidal soap 6 times per crop (I'd have to double check that), so I have to switch to spinosad and Pyganic by the end of the growing season. The other thing I use is Surround. It's pretty effective in my apple orchard, but I have to coat 3 times, and if there's a lot of rain I can't keep up with it. I've tried on cucumbers, but the plants grow too fast to keep them coated. Surround does work well on eggplant, providing that you don't get too much rain. I only used Neem once, and it killed some bees so I never tried it again. I think if you use some basic precautions it would be ok, but I was under the impression it was nontoxic to bees, and I was wrong. It definitely kills bees. The fungicides we use are Serenade and to a lesser extent, liquid copper. I couldn't grow apples here at all without Serenade, I also use it for blight and powdery mildew.