I was planning on planting a rather large vegetable garden 1/2 acre or so but and worried about using pesticides on my vegetables and killing my bees. Here in the south east we have plenty of garden pests to go around. Does anyone have any suggestions/experience with this dillema.
You need to get a pesticide guide, Your county agent should be able to help.
There is some pesticides that are not harmful to Honey bees.
Also study up on companion planting. There is a lot of information out there.
At present I don't have any (googles) to throw your way but I am sure some one on this forum does.
Google Organic Gardening and see what you can find. :)doak
Hi jgiles,
I keep an organic garden and have found a combination of biological control (nematodes for cut worms and beetle larvae), crop rotation and the occasional spray of Surround (a fine Kaolin clay sprayed on hard fruit, keeps the bugs off), neem oil (dormant spray for my fruit trees and canes) or Serenade (B. subtilis to prevent various forms of mold including blight on tomatoes and powdery mildew on soft fruit) does the job quite nicely. None of these are an issue for honey bees. A spray of dilute soap solution takes care of the occasional outbreak of aphids though I've not had one of those in the last 3 years. If you have chickens or guinea fowl I highly recommend letting them loose in the vegetable garden as long as you don't have any small seedlings. They seem to be very effective at mopping up anything bigger than an aphid that's above ground but leave the bees alone.
Hope this helps,
Grant
I too like to try to keep my garden as organic so to speak as possible. Great suggestions! I like to use the soap water too. One thing about the chickens...I don't let mine loose in the garden if I have ripe tomatoes. They seem to be attracted to the red & will pick holes in them. ;)
The Guineas don't bother stuff as much as chickens. They will attach the lower hanging tomatoes but a foot or 16 inches off the ground mine didn't bother. You will also be "tick" free.
Haven't done any study on them gathering bees. :)doak
Thanks for the replies I will keep these ideas in mind as the growing season approaches.
We let our banty chickens have free roam of the garden . They do a very thorough job of bug removal with a minimum of damage . Sure we lose some strawberries and lettuce , but that's o.k. . We figure ya gotta pay your workers something.
---Burl--- I only squack just a little bit .
My two hives are 6 feet from my vegetable garden. However, I do not use pestiside at all...! I plant about 70 tomatoes, 70 peppers, 70 eggplant, 70 squash & about a 100 cucumber plants and I use no pestiside.
ORGANIC OR NOTHIN!