Organic Pest Control - Timed Planting
by John Yazo
Timed planting is one of the oldest methods of pest control. Avoid the times when pest can cause the most damage to your crops. The use of this method involves the planting of a crop earlier or later to avoid the stage that a certain pest or pests cause the most damage to your crop.
The keeping of good records of your past gardening experiences is very important when incorporating this method of pest control to your gardening practices. You can keep a full journal or just use the ordinary calendar to keep note of what is going on in your garden. Just keep in mind that specific dates are only for your reference, plants and pests go by soil and air temperature. These conditions can vary from year to year, and most likely will. Learning new methods to judge the life cycle of pests can be done by degree days or phenological signals.
Degree days take into account the average daily temperature accumulations that influence the development of insects. This allows you to predict events that occur in the life cycle of a specific insect or insects by measuring growth in terms of temperature over time.
The studying of past growing experiences in your garden is very important and determining if a pest problem does exist, along with if it is necessary to employ a control plan. Things that need some thought before you decide if a control measure is needed are, the level of the potential damage to your crops and the life stage of the insect in concern.
Phenological signals are another method that can be used to know when pests can be a problem in your garden. It involves keeping track of plants signals like when a certain plant flowers, and what specific insect appears at that time of the growing season. This is where a garden journal is a very important part of a gardening practice. It allows you to study your past gardening records over a period of time to determine a time planting system that will work for you if needed.
Studying, learning and listening to your garden, along with the existing local plant life in your area is a very important part of putting together a plan of timed planting that will work best for you. Nature has it's own methods of keeping everything in balance naturally. Watch, listen and learn natures methods and incorporate them into your home gardening practices.
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