DIY (mostly) organic pest control

Effective organic, or mostly organic, pest control can be a very difficult process.  However, with careful "scientific" observation and research anyone should be able to effectively control pests in the garden and around the house with mostly organic methods.  While traditional chemical pesticides are extremely effective they can be a little too effective when they kill beneficial insects.  Chemical pesticides definitely have strong negative health side-effects that if we knew the truth about we probably wouldn't be messing around with as much.  I became a lot more serious about going organic when I learned that scientists often inject mice with pesticides in order to induce cancer or severe allergies (They are injected with higher concentrations than we deal with but it still makes me want to avoid them).  Not that chemical pesticides don't have a place in pest management, I just like to avoid them as much as possible.

So how does a regular person begin doing their own organic pest control?  First you must identify what insects you are dealing with.  In my garden at home I identified three problem insects: cockroaches, crickets, and green caterpillars.  At my work garden I identified cockroaches and crickets.  I observed these insects eating my produce both during the day while tending my garden but also by going out and seeing what was happening at night with a flashlight.  Going out at night was extremely beneficial in that I found almost "Egyptian plague" numbers of crickets around my house.

Three of my preferred semi-organic pest controls.  NiBan-FG uses Orthoboric acid to kill insects when they eat the bait,  diatomaceous earth kills insects as they crawl across it, and Semaspore bait infects crickets and grasshoppers that eat it with a parasitic microbe.  Be sure to wear a face mask when applying diatomaceous earth and to use 'food grade".  Pool filter diatomaceous earth is significantly more dangerous to breath in and should be avoided.  These products, and Bacillus thurgingiensis, can be found online just by typing their name into a search engine.

Second, after identifying the pests I researched online effective organic treatments for these pests.  There are a whole host of organic pest controls and I began testing some.  With each one I used careful observations were made of what effects they had and if they were effective or not.  For example, with chemical pesticides I found slightly decreased growth of my plants but all the insects, including beneficial ones, were dead.  Even the lizards were killed by the pesticides.  Garlic and chili pepper deterrents were also tested.  Both slightly reduced pest problems but not enough.  They were very effective against deterring rabbits though.  Then soap sprays on the plants were tested, also not very effective.  After working though this process of testing and observing I finally came across three products that were effective for my gardens.  Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria killed catapillars effectively, Semaspore greatly reduced crickets, and NiBan-FG killed the roaches and crickets.  Food grade diatomaceous earth was also found effective at killing all kinds of bugs when placed

A "pet" lacewings.

in locations where bugs usually hide.  Corn meal was also extremely effective for controlling ants.  Through more careful observation I learned the most effective times and ways of applying these items.  Over time, beneficial organisms populated my yard, also taking care of some of these and other pests.  I now have an abundance of lacewings (effective aphid control), praying mantis (effective at controlling all kinds of bugs), and lizards (also controlling all kinds of bugs).  Yes, I love all my beneficial organisms!  They are like my little pets.

Finding this combination took me several years and a lot of trial and error but it has been worth it.  Patience and a willingness to try new things is the key.  I am still looking for more effective treatments through careful observation or information I come across.  Also, this pest control costs about $30 per year compared to the hundreds people often spend on chemical pesticides annually.

DIY mostly organic pest control
1. Identify the pests.
2. Research and locate items that control these specific pests.
3. Apply pest control and observe results.
4. Repeat until you come up with a satisfactory solution for your home/garden.
5. Keep observing and be willing to try new things.

The key is careful observation, researching new solutions, and PATIENCE!  Trial and error is the name of the game, you must be willing to accept error!  Each region/area/person has a different set of problems and therefore a different set of solutions.  Any solutions you find specific to your situation can be of great help to others.

Foraging the city: Olives

Olives will be ripening now through December in the Sonoran Desert.  So yesterday I took a trip to Encanto Park in downtown Phoenix to see if I could find any olives ready for harvesting.  At the park I found several olive trees ready for harvest.  Olives develop on the tree green and as they ripen their color changes to a reddish-purple color and then finally to black.  They are best to harvest just before they turn black.  Olives grow amazingly well in the desert and are a huge food crop that largely goes unnoticed by the general desert dwelling public.  Very few people actually do anything but be annoyed by and try to get rid of this abundant food source in Phoenix.  So, being that olives are one mans trash, I hope to make that mans trash into a delicious olive treasure.  So I picked three pounds of nice plump reddish-purple olives right off the tree.  The problem and reason why olives are largely considered annoying trash is that if you were to bite into one right off the tree it would be disgusting.  Unprocessed olives contain a bitter compound called oleuropein which makes them unpalatable.  It is so disgusting that if you taste an unprocessed olive once you will never do it again.  (Yes, I speak from experience.)

 One of the olive trees I collected three pounds of olives from in Encanto Park.

In order to make a disgusting olive into a tasty one we must fist brine and ferment it for at least a month.  Both interesting biological processes in themselves.  First the olives were rinsed off and a small cut made on one side of them.  The cut allows for the brine to access the inside of the olive easier and can speed up processing by a few months.  Once all the olives were cleaned and cut, they were placed in a one gallon jar and submerged in an 8% sea salt solution to brine and ferment them.  A weight must be placed on top of the olives so they will not float to the top (We used a one-gallon ziplock bag filled with water to weigh the olives down).  The salt solution will flush the oleuropein out the olives, kill bad bacteria, and allow for lactic acid fermentation to take place.  Lactobacillus sp. bacteria carry out this fermentation and process some of the oleuropein into more tasteful substances.  Once a week for three to four weeks the salt brine must be replaced with fresh brine.  At week three taste an olive, if it don't taste good to you brine it for another week.  At week three or four, or when the olives taste good, drain the olives of the brine and replace it with a flavored vinegar brine.  We will discuss this process and the final vinegar brine more when this batch of olives is done in about a month.
 

My jar of brining and fermenting olives.  Olives were cleaned, cut on one side, then submerged in an 8% sea salt solution.  To keep the olives submerged they were weighed down with a water filled zip-lock bag.  The opening to the container was covered with plastic wrap to prevent any contamination. 

Plant Breath: Transpiration

Amazingly enough, plants actually breath.  They breath very different in comparison to us but yet they still breath.  Plant 'breathing' takes place through tiny microscopic pores located on the surface of their leaves called stomata.  Through these pores water and oxygen are released but carbon dioxide is absorbed.  This process of breathing is called transpiration and actually pulls and moves water through a plant from the roots all the way to the leaves.   We have developed a very simple way to measure plant transpiration using a tool called a potometer.  Actually, I am sure someone else developed it before we did but we came up with it independently...  but anyway.

At right you can see a picture of our potometer complete with a plant cutting.  The device is made of a 1ml serological pipette and about 12 inches of small diameter rubber tubing.  The smaller the graduated volume marks of the pipette the better.  Ours is actually graduated with major marks at the 10ths (100 microliters) and minor marks at the 100ths (10 microliters).  The pipettes and small diameter rubber tubing (we use 3mm inner diameter but larger can be used) can easily be found for purchase through an internet search and together should cost less than $10.  You could also see if a local school lab would let you have or borrow these materials.  Once you have your pipette and tubing simply join them together.

Next you will need the plant cutting that you are going to test on the potometer.  Before you place the stem in the tubing you must first make a continuous column of water that goes all the way through the tubing and ends somewhere in the pipette.  In order to do this you must submerge your tubing and part of your pipette under water.  Make sure there are no air bubbles in the tubing and pipette.  Then, by keeping the end of the tubing underwater insert the stem of your test plant into it. The stem cutting must be as fresh as possible!  Make sure that only the stem portion of the plant cutting goes underwater.  If the leaf portions of the cutting gets wet the plant will not transpire normally.  When the plant stem is inserted into the tubing make sure it has a tight fit so nothing can escape or enter, and make sure there is no air bubble between the stem and the water.  After all this is done you should have a column of water, with no air bubbles, that touches the stem and ends somewhere in the pipette.  Tape this up somewhere like in the photo above and mark the starting point for the water in the pipette (the starting point will be where the water ends in the pipette).

After your potometer is set-up wait an hour or two and see how far down the water has moved the pipette to determine how much water has been transpired.  The same volume of water that has been removed from the pipette has been absorbed and transpired out of the plant as it 'breathed'.  This basic set-up can be used to make a variety of experiments such as comparing how much a plant transpired in the light vs. dark, different temperatures, comparing different species, and comparing different numbers of leaves.  If you are doing a temperature of light comparison it is best to use the same plant species and maybe the same plant cutting.  If you don't use the same cutting try to use the same number of leaves.  Or if you are comparing different species try to make leaf area as equal as possible for each cutting as much as possible.  A whole variety of tests can be used to demonstrate plant water use with this simple device.