hi sharon, thats great to hear your organic efforts are going well. organic gardening isnt new at all in fact it really is the old way of gardening before companies started making all those fancy synthetic treatments and fertilisers available. Your leaf eating worms sound like caterpillars, or loopers, and the black bugs eating the new tips are most likely aphids. If there are only a few caterpillars you can just pick them off. aphids can also be knocked off with a jet spray from the hose (just cradle the area in your other hand while you do so the plant doesnt flail about). mzounubi, you may get different pests where you are but I find with citrus its the aphids, scale and the fruit fly that are just attracted to them like a magnet. to control the scale and aphids you can use an organic pest oil which will suffocate them and with my citrus I do sometimes resort to this because they can be such a problem with citrus trees, to protect mine from fruit fly I use calico bags and once the fruit starts forming I bag the clusters of fruit and it has worked 100% for me at keeping the fruit fly out. For 100 fruiting trees though, it could be a lot of work unless youre really dedicated but there are also fruit fly lures and traps available to hang in trees as an alternative. trance

Hi reptile girl: Let me say that I understand your feelings of being critizied and your question ignored. I read your original post then everyone thereafter, then back to yours. I'm hoping I can help you feel less attacked and perhaps give you a better understanding of how this site works. I also had an experience of feeling attacked and I barked back, then several people jumped on me etc. This is what I hear in your original posting: you are very proud of the hard work you have put into your garden of choice, SYG. You continue to give info about your efforts to provide the best growing mixture and fertilizers that have worked for you. You were not looking for any additional information about soil structure, how you should change the way you garden, etc. you are a happy camper with what you have accomplished and should be. The one question that you asked was what organic fertilizer could you add to your garden to insure the best possible crops. Instead you got bombarded with advice, corrections, suggestions, critisims etc. These are my thoughts that I hope help you; first it is helpful to understand that the people who hang out on the Garden Web are extremely knowledgable gardening people either through university or years of experience or both. These people can help you with virtually any question or problem that you may have. Also just by reading in several different areas you will learn so much more than you can imagine. Now all these experts are great resources but just like a professor, they are quite willing to share their ideas, thoughts, tried experiments and so on. And just as professors in the same subject area, they do not all agree with each others view point or practices. Often many of the postings are the experts discussing between themselves the positive & negatives of what has been written. One thing can be said about this site, there are many generous people who are willing to share their views and that's great. What you probably should do in the future is ask your question, that's it. By putting down so much info, everyone got on board with their ideas, stuff went back and forth and you ultimately felt attacked. They really are not attacking, they are very eager to share their knowledge to be a benefit to you. If you visit again and have a concern or question, I'd suggest giving only pertainent info that would help the other readers to give you exactly what your looking for, no more, no less. Those of us who reply to a post should probably take an extra minute to understand exactly what info is needed and offer only that unless the poster comes back to ask for more info. Efforts to help all who post are truly generous with their time and talent but I can see the flip side, so much response with so much advice and/or critiques can be overwhelming to the newbies. I hate to see & read the sniping back and forth that escalates to a point where some really nasty things are said. I think that before we offer so much advice, we may need to realize that not everyone wants or needs all of the knowledge that we are so eager to share and are then offended "after all we've done" when the writer says "enough." I hope reptile girl that you can see this site in a new positive way. My one big piece of advice comes from a Russian grandma that lived next door years ago. She had several potted rose bushes that produced gorgeous roses and all she did was throw left over vegetables, fruit skins, virtually anything into a pot, covered it with water and left it heat for many hours. What was left she poured on the roses. It sure worked. Last year I had quite a science experiment in my frig. plus stuff to go out to the compost pile. I gathered it all together and decided to put some of the scraps into my blender w/some water and spin for awhile. When I was done I had two big bowls of gunk that I poured on my two Deodor cedars. Within days those trees were sprouting all kinds of new growth on all the branches and both trees became substantially fuller and taller. I thought it was hilarious. Maybe I should repeat that routine and try it diluted much more in several other areas of the garden. I may be on to something. Good luck with your crops, it is fun and rewarding when you can actually feed yourself from your own garden, plus I'm sure the nutrition levels are so much greater than the average found in stores.

I went no-spray many years ago. Encouraging birds, lizards, toads & frogs helped a lot. The rose area has a couple of bird feeders, three waters, including one big plant platter on the ground that the frogs love to soak in. Has some large rocks in it so tiny birds feel safe using it for baths & drinking. Please, NO OFFENSE intended, but I didn't have outdoor cats or dogs, which helps if you're trying to establish a wildlife-friendly yard. Yes, I LOVE pets!!! If you have outdoor pets, maybe you can place feeders & water in more raised or sheltered locations. Hang a few bird houses in sheltered places & I'm careful not to disturb bird nests in nearby shrubs & trees. My dad's fruit trees (also native species) attract birds, too. They sample a bit, but do little harm. A few overturned broken pots under shrubs make good toad hideouts. I have sprayed the veggies & some herbs that were getting gobbled. Used a solution of blender-shredded artemisia leaves--bitterest stuff I could think of--& it seemed to work. So now I clip stems & leaves to mulch them around the affected plants. Good luck.

I'm afraid that there is really no way we can identify what might be making those few little holes. There are LOTS of possibilities! I suggest that you head out there with a flashlight one evening and see if you can find a munching caterpillar, beetle, slug, weevil, earwig, etc. I sure wouldn't worry about such a minor problem. Harsh pesticides shouldn't come into consideration, especially on edible plants.