A hearty Hello from a new member.

[Walapini-Kid]

Hello to all you organic gardening fellow members. I hope this is the proper place to introduce myself and say how thankful I am to find a place where we can share knowledge and learn.

I've just been learning through experience how to organic garden the last 8 years. In my youth I remeber the change from manure spreaders to chemical fertilizer applicators becoming the "equipment du jour."

How happy grandpa was to wipe out the boll weevil from his cotton crops with DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane)
All the while never considering the decline in wild life populations both birds and fish. (Incidentally the rise of various modern ailments seems to have appeared along the same time frame) Hum?

So although I had a brief glimpse as a youngster of the "Old Ways" they were swiftly passing before my eyes. I share this so that you realize that the chemical soup of modern day agriculture had just began to be cooked up as I became old enough to begin my own gardening expirence. By that time if you didn't throw some "Miracle Grow" at whatever you were growing, you just weren't with it. (I know not everyone ate the soup), but most of us did and went back for more.

We just didn't understand we were killing every living microbe in the soil built up over generations of manure spreading, composting and crop rotation that had been been practiced by every generation before us. Now we had a NEW and BETTER way! That's also about the same time they started telling us how wonderful computers were going to make our lives.

So for years I had been infected with that way of thinking. Anytime I tried to read some or study about going back to the old ways of gardening it just appeared to time consuming and complicated the way it was presented that I just kept going to the Big Box Store and buying another sack of plant dope (Miracle Grow)

I continued to notice along the journey though that there were these spots, like at the bottom of the old Hog pen where the weeds were 7Xs bigger than anywhere else, and when we planted anything in this soil it always out performed the chemical soup of modern day fertilizers producing a flavor unparalleled by any other!

It just all seemed such a mystery to figure out how to reproduce what had happened in the Hog Pen over 20 years. Then after moving to the High Desert and having so many gardening challenges to learn about and overcome, I took all the time I had not been willing to invest in years gone by and began to earnestly study soil biology and how all this great mystery really worked.

Thankfully along the way I met a local mentor who has an organic nursery and through his friendship and sharing knowledge, I at least feel confident to say I am beggining to see the forest for the trees, or the microbes in the tea?

I've just completed my 2nd year of composting about 8 truck loads of 1/2 alpaca manure and leaves, inoculated with plenty of active worm castings from the Worm hotel. (1 yard worm ben) where we also run the drip hose and catch the leche that comes out for an added boost where wanted.

My compost pile is ok, but it's still a little heavy and I would pefer to mix it 50/50 with peat moss and a little perlite, but alas finances prohibit that temporarily. This brings me to the why for my 1st post and searching out this forumn!

My compost is still a little Nitrogen rich, and so I am having a bit of trouble with aphids under the lettuce leaves and on my pepper seedlings. I am wanting to use some good predatory insects from my supplier (ARBICO) but was hoping to get some input from others using the same techniques for pest control.

I am going to call ARBICO before ordering and ask them as well, but end users are the best with real would advice so I ask you guys and gals,
1.) What predator insect would you choose if you wanted to control soft bodied pest like aphids.
2.) Would you order it in adult, larvae / pupa or egg stage to be able to continue releasing them every few weeks as needed? (storing in the frig)

Thanks, for those who made it to the end of my long winded intro!
I sure appreciate those who share knowledge and appreciate your time to reply!

PS, why is it that when the soil you are building is a bit out of balance (High Nitrogen) does it promote pest infestation?
PSS, how may I help speed up my composting to be more complete before I use it? ( I need a lil tractor! Yikes ) currently it only gets flipped once or twice a year.
Or a few willing helpers...

 

[Meadowlark]

Welcome @Walapini-Kid

You will find folks here that use different approaches to gardening and that makes for some interesting discussions. Use the search engine to find those discussions.

In the meantime, on your PSS, nothing makes compost faster and more completely than mixing it up. The more you stir it, the better it heats killing off those weed seeds and /or any pathogens. Coincidentally, I just turned mine today...

 

[redback]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the background story. I have been organic gardening for 50 years but recently a change has come over the method I use due to the advent of microbial theory. I am trying to treat the soil as a living medium and the garden as an eco-system. This is relevant to your questions because the presence of high nitrogen soil additive and pests (aphid) become part of a bigger question of balance.

The high nitrogen just means you plant lettuce and other nitrogen lovers to make use of the temporary imbalance and mulch with wood chips and mulches that use nitrogen 'drawdown' as a decomposition tool. Avoid planting potatoes, tomatoes and carrots until the ground has mellowed the nitrogen problem.

The aphid problem is overcome by stopping the practice of 'monoculture' and planting a wide variety of crops in a 'polyculture'. Choose marigolds, borage and other perennials and annual flowers as well as allowing the self-sown seeds and weeds to prosper for a while. This variety gives shelter and food to a variety of inhabitants including ladybirds, predator wasps, bees, birds, lizards and multiple other beetles and bugs. The aphids become part of a living garden that balances the populations. You have to sacrifice some plants, but the remaining plants become resilient to attack due to their high nutrient content.

I turn my compost into the neighboring bin about every two weeks - by fork. It is irregular timing because the third bin gets emptied onto the garden before it is filled again. I don't buy predators I breed everything in the compost and garden beds. I hope you join the growing number of natural gardeners.

 

[Walapini-Kid]

Welcome @Walapini-Kid

You will find folks here that use different approaches to gardening and that makes for some interesting discussions. Use the search engine to find those discussions.

In the meantime, on your PSS, nothing makes compost faster and more completely than mixing it up. The more you stir it, the better it heats killing off those weed seeds and /or any pathogens. Coincidentally, I just turned mine today...
View attachment 108455

Thanks for the welcome and the composting tip! How often do you like to turn yours over?

 

[Walapini-Kid]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the background story. I have been organic gardening for 50 years but recently a change has come over the method I use due to the advent of microbial theory. I am trying to treat the soil as a living medium and the garden as an eco-system. This is relevant to your questions because the presence of high nitrogen soil additive and pests (aphid) become part of a bigger question of balance.

The high nitrogen just means you plant lettuce and other nitrogen lovers to make use of the temporary imbalance and mulch with wood chips and mulches that use nitrogen 'drawdown' as a decomposition tool. Avoid planting potatoes, tomatoes and carrots until the ground has mellowed the nitrogen problem.

The aphid problem is overcome by stopping the practice of 'monoculture' and planting a wide variety of crops in a 'polyculture'. Choose marigolds, borage and other perennials and annual flowers as well as allowing the self-sown seeds and weeds to prosper for a while. This variety gives shelter and food to a variety of inhabitants including ladybirds, predator wasps, bees, birds, lizards and multiple other beetles and bugs. The aphids become part of a living garden that balances the populations. You have to sacrifice some plants, but the remaining plants become resilient to attack due to their high nutrient content.

I turn my compost into the neighboring bin about every two weeks - by fork. It is irregular timing because the third bin gets emptied onto the garden before it is filled again. I don't buy predators I breed everything in the compost and garden beds. I hope you join the growing number of natural gardeners.

Thanks so much for your warm welcome. I very much appreciate the knowledge you share as it has yet to all become 2nd nature to me. It seems like it's easy the first 10 years or so to focus on individual things to much and not look at the whole BIG PICTURE.

I spent my first 2 years trying to "Unlearn" the kill every insect you see mentality...

 

[Meadowlark]

Thanks for the welcome and the composting tip! How often do you like to turn yours over?

Every two weeks in a big pile like that.