Disease and Insect Control on Your Land Getting to know the latest disease and pest control measures
It is the top priority of every gardener to know all about pest control measures as well as disease control measures. This is essential to successful vegetable production, and harvesting.
Both insects as well as diseases are getting to be more of a serious problem, with the passing of the days, because they are getting to be immune to pesticides. This happens to be a vicious circle. You spray powerful pesticides on them to kill just one generation of insects and pests. Within a couple of months, you have a more powerful generation mutating, this particular insect generation is going to be pesticide resistant.
To counteract this particular problem, we are going to use even more powerful pesticides not knowing the harm those poisons and chemical toxins can do to our own system. But then we are working on a short-term solution.
There is another reason why more and more different strains of insects are cropping up so easily on our land. That is because we have changed our agricultural practices. These may now favor the growth of the insect population on the land.
This book is going to give you plenty of information on how you can control pests as well as diseases in your garden. There will be plenty of tips and precautions, as well as methods of how you can control the common insects and diseases found in your garden or in your vegetable patch right now.
Why the Need for Controlling Pests
Ancient Eastern mythology says that when the gods taught man to cultivate the land, and start growing crops, instead of hunting the rest of the birds and animals on mother earth, the insects decided to go to the gods en masse. They had a complaint. They had been living on the land, without any disturbance, for millenniums, and then suddenly the gods had given man permission to uproot their houses, while tilling and plowing the land.
The gods smiled at them and said, that they were getting the added benefit of having their food being produced for man, upon the land where they had made their houses and colonies. This food was going to be produced first for them, and then for man. And since then insects have had a free hand to eat any crop grown on the land which has been plowed and tilled, prepared, fertilized, and watered.
And so the battle for dominance continues, with mankind trying to look for more and more practical and effective methods, for insect and plant disease control.
Factors Affecting Pest Control Measures
Insects and plant diseases cause loss to home gardeners, market growers, and commercial growers to the tune of many billions of dollars, all over the world, annually. There is no way in which we can calculate the loss of food items, which have been infected and destroyed through fungus, bacterial and virus infections, as well as insect diseases.
There are a large number of factors which are involved in this particular calculation, and that is why the estimate cannot be done, however many researchers try to waste time calculating the expenditure of the money expended for disease control, the making of more powerful and more toxic pesticides, and other pest control and disease control methods being implemented globally.
In many cases all over the world, the insect attack is going to reduce the yield that was expected in such a manner that the prices of those particular vegetables or fruit are going to go up exponentially. Damage estimates calculated on the basis of this particular high price are going to be misleading because the price would not have been so high if the damage had not occurred in the first instance!
Even though the control measures are being applied by the grower of the vegetables or the fruit, the high price has to be paid by the consumer. He is paying for the cost of the insect control and the disease control, which was used on the land by you, the gardener, or market grower.
If you had used the best system, and methods, in order to control the diseases in the first place, the high price for the implementation of this method should not have been needed. These control measures are going to increase the cost of production of the vegetables and for some crops, the insect control and disease control is one of the large items and expenditures in the production cost.
Also, diseases and insect attacks are capable of reducing the quality of the harvest. When once you had a cabbage back of healthy cabbages, it is possible that the next time you sow the cabbages, in the land which has not been cleansed of infections and diseases, you are going to get infected and “rotten” heads of cabbages in your next harvest.
However, if you had made sure that the land was “cleansed” of infections before hand, you could have been insured against insect and fungal attacks. That would ultimately mean a healthy harvest.
All over the world, the quality of plants and vegetables coming into the market are regulated strictly, with standards and grades of quality control. There are limits to the amount of insect injury and diseases which are allowed to be present in vegetables and fruit in a particularly designated grade before marketing.
Pest Control Methods
There are a number of pest control methods, available to us, with which we can manage this control systematically and methodically with a little bit of common sense and application.
Destruction of Plant Hosts
There are plenty of plant hosts, which harbor insects as well as disease bearing fungi, viruses, and bacteria. Insects of many kinds pass the winter in the warm compost heap in your garden, where they have plenty of nutrition, and plenty of protection at the same time. This compost heap is capable of harboring harmful as well as useful insects at the same time.
Fungicides do not target one particular pest. Their job is to kill all the insect life in the area where they are being utilized and sprayed. That means even good insects, which are capable of getting rid of insect pests are going to be destroyed during the fumigation process.
If the plant refuse, which has been left over during the winter, in the garden, and is harboring the pests is plowed under in the land, a number of these insects are going to be killed due to lack of nourishment and lack of air. In many cases, thorough disking and plowing methods are very effective in destroying hiding places for these insects. Some of these insects are going to pass the winter in the weeds managing to survive in the harsh climates. That is because they have adapted themselves to do so down the ages.
They are also going to survive in the trash present in the fence rows and around the edges of the fields. Therefore the cleaning up of these particular places every spring is essential. This waste can be chopped up thoroughly, and plowed right into the land in order to decompose and give the land much-needed and special green manure while getting rid of the insects at the same time.
However, the diseases that live over the winter on the remains of the plants are not going to be destroyed, even with the plowing. That is because they are in spore form and they are capable of surviving in extreme conditions. In the same manner, many of the virus diseases which affect vegetable growth survive the winter in the roots of perennial weeds. With the coming of the spring, these viruses are going to wake up and infect any plant, which is going to be planted during the spring planting by the gardener.
The viruses particularly love the sections of these weeds near the seed beds and near the green houses really necessary where the young plants are being grown for transplanting purposes. That is because you cannot afford any sort of infection of the young transplants through viruses which are being harbored by the weeds growing just outside the greenhouses and, of which the spores can reach your growing young plants in the greenhouse through an airborne infection.
Talking about restricting yourself to growing just one plant in a season, my request is do not do that. Make up a mixture of a number of families, so that you get at least a good harvest of one particular plant, even if another plant variety and family is slightly damaged.
I remember a traditional story about one of these very stubborn farmers, even though it is rather sad, it does have a moral of "Do Not Put All Your Eggs in One Basket." So now this farmer decided to sow green gram on his fields, because it was so much in demand. Even though his fellow farmer friends told him that he should diversify by planting other crops, he said that they had not planted green gram and he was the only one planting it so he would make a really good harvest and profit.
Three days before harvesting time, the rain came down and wiped out his crop. And so that was the end of his dream of being a rich, prosperous, farmer. As he looked stony eyed upon his land, his distracted wife happened to look at the sky, where lightning was flashing ever so often as the torrents poured down and said, “just look at the lightning.”
And his answer was, “yes, it seems like Mother Nature is shining a torch in order to check out if any of the green gram was left dry, and then the message is given out via thunder, “go on clouds, just go and rain upon the East side corner of the crop, can you, it looks plenty dry.” She is doing a real thorough job her own way.”
So now you know about the worth of insect and disease control and how you can manage a good harvest with just a little bit of elementary precautions, you may want to try out these systems with the help of your local authorities who are experienced in this field. Possibly you have a number of organic fertilizers, which are native to your land, and which have been used for millenniums to get rid of insect pests. In the southern states of North America, tobacco, even though it is highly toxic is used as a fumigant to get rid of pests. Bougainvillea leaf solutions and other pest control measures can also be found online.
Here is another of our publications, which can give you information about natural and organic pest control measures in order to get rid of fungi and pests.
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