Imitate Nature for Higher Yields & Less Pests

Get Hundreds of Free Workers AND an Abundant Harvest!

Want less pests in your garden? To help achieve a balance between pests and predators, I’ve found that imitating natural ecosystems can be a useful pest management strategy to use.

Facilitating natural predator-pest relationships in your garden is a way to harness hundreds of free workers to help manage insect imbalances. An example is the ‘aphid banquet’ on the menu for this ladybird’s lunch!

How to Work with and Imitate Nature

Whilst ‘having a relationship’ with birds, lizards, frogs and insects may not be on your To Do List, seeking a ‘win-win’ outcome by working with these creatures in your garden can help you:

1. Achieve a higher crop yield (by encouraging more Pollinators); and
2. Minimise insect damage to your edibles (by creating an unwritten ‘Workplace Agreement’ of sorts with Pest Predators – one that offers the kind of job perks that are an incentive for them to get to work in your garden)!

I’ve learned the benefits of ’employing’ hundreds of workers in my garden. Even though I don’t know them all by name, they still turn up regularly for work, never ask for a raise, are reliable in undertaking their jobs and save me hours of hard labour. In this article, I’ll share with you what my end of the agreement entails and how you can negotiate a similar arrangement at your place.

“In trying to isolate an insect and deal with it separately out of relation to the ecosystem in which it lives, we work against nature, which in turn works against us in counter-productive results.” – John Jeavons, author

A garden free from herbicides & other chemicals is not only healthier for you, but creates a safe environment to grow food and for insects & other creatures to take up residence.

Imitate Nature by Creating a Balanced Ecosystem

In our home gardens, we tend to have a controlled environment where:

• The soil is often disturbed by digging, transplanting, uprooting and weeding.
• Vegetables and plants are grown in neat rows or beds.
• We often sow seeds and plants that are not native to the climate.
• We often have to deal with introduced pests and insects that can thrive, where they have little natural competition or predators.

Whereas in undisturbed natural environments like on a forest floor, incredible plant diversity abounds!

There are no straight lines, rows of identical plants and rarely any major pest problems. Only plants that are native to the area grow there, fed by a healthy soil that has not been depleted – one that is fed by the ecosystem it is part of.

Leaves, sticks, dead plants and animals, fungi and bacteria all on the ground – decaying and returning nutrients back into the soil for new plants to thrive and grow.

“…about 90% of the time, insects only attack unhealthy plants. Just as a healthy person who eats good food is less susceptible to disease, so are healthy plants on a good diet less susceptible to plant disease and pest attack. The insect is not the source of the problem, but rather an unhealthy soil is. The soil needs your energy, not the insect.” – John Jeavons

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So wherever possible, I try to learn from and imitate natural systems in my own garden environment. Both in my micro gardens (pots and containers) and raised beds.

For example, in nature, you’ll see biodiversity in naturally occurring species of plants in every ecosystem. Each plant has different soil and mineral needs. You’ll notice plants in various shapes and sizes. Often in layers, like in a forest. From the top canopy right down to the ground floor. How do you apply this biodiversity in your garden? By planting a variety of edibles of different heights and shapes.

David Holmgren, Co-Originator of the Permaculture concept said: “All organisms and species obtain a yield from their environment adequate to sustain them.” This is  a Permaculture principle and model from nature we can apply.

So how can this help you to have less pests to deal with? Change your pest management strategies for more abundant harvests and less work.

Lessons from Nature

David Holmgren (author, ‘Permaculture Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability’) wisely advises to “Use and Value Diversity – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”

Another lesson we can draw from Permaculture is to turn the Problem, into the Solution.

Stop focusing on your food being destroyed by caterpillars or grasshoppers. Instead, think about where the natural living control solution lies. More often than not, nature’s balance can be restored by increasing the ratio of predators to pests.

Bill Mollison, one of the fathers of Permaculture, said “You don’t have a snail problem, you have a duck deficiency!” So if your aphids are out of control, you need more ladybirds, not a chemical spray!

How to Have Less Pests and More Beneficial Predators

• Encourage Predator Insects to Manage Pests for You. Beneficial predators are amongst the best allies and visitors to woo into your garden. This army of pest patrollers will exterminate and maintain balance far better than we can. On one condition. So long as you keep your garden chemical-free.

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• Here’s where this ‘Workplace Agreement’ comes in! When you understand what these hard-working ’employees’ (insects, birds, frogs and lizards) are looking for in their ‘place of employment’ (your garden), you can tailor an attractive package (job perks) that will ensure they are fully employed for their lifetime (food source).

Their position is Hitman (or Woman) and their basic job description is to assassinate (eat their favourite food – what a great bonus)! This clever tree frog selected a perch in the shady petals of a flower and patiently waits for his prey.

• All you have to do in return is organise suitable accommodation, regular drinks and the occasional feed. Oh, and don’t forget O.H. & S. (a safe working environment with no chemicals). I reckon it’s a bargain arrangement!

Meet a Few Beneficial Insects

Praying mantids: These insects are fearless carnivorous hunters. They will delightedly feast on grasshoppers, crickets, moths, flies and larger sap-sucking insects, saving you the trouble of catching them.

I offered up a freshly squashed grasshopper to this preying mantid on my lemon basil. He looked at me like I was from another planet. I’m sure he was thinking “Don’t bother I only eat LIVE prey. Thanks anyway, I’ll catch my own!”

How to Make a Praying Mantis Habitat Video – powered by ehow

Hoverflies: Feed on flower nectar and will raise young (larvae) that have voracious appetites for a wide range of pests. These include aphids, thrips and other plant-sucking insects. Yummy!

Ladybirds (or ladybeetles) do an amazing vacuuming job of your aphids, mealybugs and scale population (eating 40-50/day and their larvae even more!) – It’s worth leaving them a sacrificial plant infested with aphids to keep them happy and hanging around to do more work for you.

“In order to have beneficial insects in your food-producing area, you must provide food for them – which may be some of the harmful insects! If there are no harmful insects … then there will be few, if any, beneficial insects to act as friendly guardians … the need for both kinds of insects for the most healthy garden – is symbolic of nature’s balances.” – John Jeavons

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Damselflies: Much like their cousins the Dragonflies, they eat vast quantities of insects on the fly. Damselflies can consume their body weight in food in just half an hour – no mean feat! They are particularly fond of (caterpillar laying) moths and sap-sucking aphids. Yay!

Besides, these beautiful insects are worth encouraging just to watch them making LOVE in their famous heart shape!

Other beneficial insects you should welcome include spiders, assassin bugs, lacewings and parasitic wasps.

Planting flowering shrubs and herbs in amongst your food crops will encourage these beneficials (like this Hover Fly) into your garden.

How to Attract Nectar-Feeding Pollinators

We often focus on the ‘fruits’ of our labours in an edible garden, thinking about the harvest – the end result we can eat. However, there are a host of other beneficial pollinating insects who play a role in increasing our harvest considerably, with a little encouragement.

Bees, wasps and butterflies play an incredibly important role in moving pollen from one flower to another, helping to pollinate our food crops as they eat their daily meals.

“I think about pollination and harvests this way: No flowers = no food = no pollinators = NO CROPS!” – Anne Gibson, The Micro Gardener

Flowers for Pollinators

• Provide pollinators with a variety of flowering herbs and flowers. This will give beneficial insects a source of nectar and pollen. In return, they’ll help increase your yield with free pollination services.

Grow some extra herbs and allow them to flower and go to seed (such as dill, coriander (cilantro), rocket (arugula), basil or other salvias, parsley, rosemary and chives. These flowering herbs in amongst my vegetables not only provide me with free seeds, but also help feed beneficial insects and confuse pests. Diversity makes it harder for them to find the scent and shape of the plant they are seeking.

• Using this technique can increase your harvest (by saving the seeds for future crops) and maximise the pollination of the food crops you are currently growing.

Just because you have flowers in your garden, don’t assume they will meet the needs of your beneficial insects. These proteas from my backyard are too large for tiny beneficials but the bees LOVE them and I often have to wait until they’ve had breakfast before I can cut a stem! The small creamy lemon myrtle flowers are more suitable for tiny pollinators.

• Because the majority of these insects are so tiny, they need to feed on small open shallow flowers. These are better than long deep flowers where they can drown in the nectar.

“Garden Guardians are the free workers in your backyard. They include birds, lizards, frogs, small marsupials and bats.” – Jane Davenport, Author ‘The Garden Guardians’

Provide ‘Bed & Breakfast’

Plant a variety of perennials, annuals and shrubs in your garden. These will help provide sheltered spots where beneficial insects and predators (like birds, lizards and frogs) can hide in bad weather. They will be safeguarded against their own predators. You can encourage a healthy balance and increase your harvest by ensuring you include:

1. Plant diversity = food (nectar, pollen, prey insects, berries and seeds for birds). If a bird stops by to feed on seeds, they may well hang around for the insects too.
2. Shelter (variety of plants and mulch) – these will also provide nesting materials for birds.
3. Water (e.g. a fountain or large terracotta plant saucer) with 2-5cm of water in the bottom. Fill up with a few flat rocks/pebbles that rise above the surface for beneficials to land on.
4. A bird perch.

Encourage these beneficial insects and garden helpers to take up residence at your place. Simply avoid chemicals and grow flowering species.

Insectary Garden Flowers & Plants to Attract Beneficials

Fruit, berry, flower and seed-bearing plants are all attractive to birds and butterflies who also help pollination. Flowers with nectar will attract many beneficial insects.

Here are a few to get started: Basil, Chervil, Coriander (cilantro), Dill, Caraway, Echinacea (coneflowers), Fennel, Coreopsis, Sunflowers, Lovage, Borage, Feverfew, Millet, Sweet Alyssum, Parsley, Calendula, Cosmos, Queen Anne’s lace, Yarrow, Black-eyed Susan and Tansy or learn more about beneficial herbs you can grow. I’d also encourage you to plant some natives to your area.

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Related Articles and Videos:

• How to Protect Seedlings from Pests
• How to Control Garden Pest Insects Naturally
• Why are Ants in my Plants, Pots and Soil?
• 5 Simple Secrets to Building Healthy Soil
• Organic Fruit Fly Control Strategies
• Coping with Caterpillars Part 1
• Coping with Caterpillars Part 2
• 13 Benefits of Growing Flowers in your Vegetable Garden

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© Copyright Anne Gibson, The Micro Gardener 2016. https://themicrogardener.com. All rights reserved.

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