A New Chapter

My organic mini farm is now into a new chapter, an unpleasant one though ........ yes pests. When I had an active part in the economic chain, I had to deal with lots of pests but of a different kind. Dealing with human pests I had a lot of experience in but garden insect pests ........ it's totally new for me.

Last week I noticed that the leaves of the okra plant is turning yellow and some of the leaves have a layer of white powdery stuff on it. One of the bell capsicum looks retarded ...... at first we thought it was a different species. The brinjal leaves were rather holy .......... oops!! I mean fully of holes.

Inspected the leaves one by one and found that there were lots of activity going on some of them. Little township were already established on the underside of the leaves while some were in the process of construction and the pest were already partying..........Whoaa!!! this is bad. Surf the net to find a suitable solution to this problem.

Some of the sites suggested chemical pesticides and send them to kingdom come ........... hehe!!!! very tempting but I am into organic ........ not interested in poisioning myself and family ........ you know like the current melamine cases. Some recommended using a mild soap solution .......... naa!!! chemicals too!!!

From my research there are good bugs and naughty bugs, the trick is to control the number of naughty kind of bugs with the good kind. One of the most effective way without using chemicals is of course physically removing them. The worst pest at the moment are aphids, they are also carrier of plant disease and is transmitted when they suck the juice from the plants. They even deposite some kind of sweetish stuff that encourages somekind of whitish coloured fungus to grow and damage the plant.

Pests ....... Ooooooo!!!! this pesky little things BUT I still think the worst kind of pest are those of the human kind .......