Keeping up with the pests with a little wu-wei

My favourite kind of pest control is to do nothing.

Its easy!

Here, someone has done the job for me. It’s a scene that I see many times a day in different parts of the garden. Predators, in this case a spider take care of more than their bodyweight in pests every day and they don’t ask for much, just a place to rest and more pests.

It wasn’t easy for me to let go of the ‘must kill pests’ attitude that had I had been conditioned with. It took several years to let go of the idea that organic poisons were necessary and that I had to spray our veggies with, at least, soapy water every week.

Every year, as soon as i saw holes in my leaves, I went at it. Then the year before last, i said ‘no more’!

At first, I cried when I saw while crops devastated . It happened again and again but I noticed that each time, a little less was being destroyed and more survived.

This year though, besides one test spray of soapy water on a couple of test plants, I’ve used no poison on the main garden at all.

What I see now is a dazzling array of critters who have heard the message of the last two years and come to live at out place, rent free.

I’m a predator too of course, it’s in my blood. I still enjoy spying a green caterpillar and either eating it, squishing it or feeding it to the chooks. Slugs still get the boot as do the imported earwigs.

Nobody is completely harmless, not even a sweetie like yours truly but this way, I have far less worry and work to do.