Alright, this is John Kohler with growing
your greens dot com, with another exciting
episode for ya.
I’m still at the eco farm conference, if
you guys saw the last episode, the last episode
was like my summary of the eco farm conference,
and you know I went to a lot of different
speakers, and heard a lot of different presentations.
I learned a lot of stuff but as you guys will
know, I’m not gonna be able to interview
many of the speakers here, but there’s one
I actually had to corner, I stayed late tonight
to do that for ya, through like a dinner,
through an award ceremony, and three hours
later I finally got this guy cornered and
we’re getting him in an interview for you
guys because I believe it is so valuable.
One of my favorite presentations that I went
to, this year, was this guy’s talk, there’s
like two different speakers, but he by far
was a better speaker, conveyed more information
and more importantly more information that
will help me but also help you guys in your
quest for growing food organically, because
he’s talking about something I wish I had
more information on, but this is what he specialized
in.
This is Dr. Bill Olkowski, he has a PHD in
entomology from UC Berkley way back in the
day, I mean he wrote this book partly, The
Urban House, and this is like back, copy write
nineteen seventy seven, I think this is out
of print.
He also has other books on like basically
how to garden, without using pesticides and
all this kind of stuff.
Right, even organic pesticides, he’s not
in favor of using organic pesticides maybe
as a last control, because what he’s really
into is using the beneficials, so what were
gonna get into this episode, is actually we’re
gonna explain to you guys, why’s is important
not to just be spraying stuff, even if it
is organic and some tips that you guys can
use so that you don’t have to spray anything
in the first place, so you cannot have bugs
in the first place.
So one of the things I wanted to talk to dr.
bill Olkowski about today is basically allowing
the plants in your garden to actually attract
the insects.
There’s this mentality in our society today,
like bad bacteria it’s bad we need that
hand sanitizer to kill them all, just kill
them all the bugs but see when we’re killing
the bugs, the bacteria in our hands we’re
killing not only killing the bad bugs but
we’re killing the good ones as well.
And you know, nature just slides in his presentation
today that nature is in cycles and there’s
an equilibrium balance, so we need to have
the good, we need to have the bad, there needs
to be good forces out there and there needs
to be bad forces out there, and they’re
gonna hopefully balance out, hopefully the
good is gonna overrun the bad and that is
how nature set things up because if nature
didn’t set things up so that good always
prevailed over the bad, we wouldn’t be alive
today, who knows all the diseases.
Wed be covered in bugs.
Wed be covered in bugs but that’s just one
part of nature right and so, some of his techniques
may, are, may sound kind of weird but hey
we don’t wanna we wanna have some plants
and just let them grow and just attract some
aphids, but these aphids may not go to your
other plants and then once there are aphids
there, whats gonna happen is good bugs are
gonna fly around because good bugs are out
there and guess what?
They wanna either eat the bad bugs, they wanna
lay eggs in them, they wanna do all, parasitize
them, all kinds of crazy stuff, then those
beneficials are gonna transfer over to your
vegetables when the aphids are there and if
you don’t ever leave any aphids, you always
kill them all, you’re never gonna have any
beneficials.
So Dr Bill Olkowski do you wanna talk more
about this kind of concept.
Well I would like to see people think about
seeding in commercially available predators
and parasites.
See as a seed you don’t have to spend a
lot of time or money on it but you can leave
it in your garden and they’ll find their
way or find the food, which is the pests,
so sometimes when you’re studying a new
garden it’s been so devastated, and the
environment there is no food there for the
natural enemies.
So this would be a way to seed them in.
so what are some of these things they should
seed in, you know some of these predatory
insects.
Predatory mites for instance would be a really
good one, and they sell them they’re cheap,
There’s two species that are commonly available,
especially in greenhouses or indoor environments,
but there’s others too, it’s lacewings,
they’re sold in the egg stage and usually
you get a sort of a shaker and you shake them
out on the plants, and they'll hatch into
sort of an alligator like thing, maybe a quarter
of an inch long, and they’ll eat caterpillars,
aphids, scales all kinds of things.
So that’s a commercially available thing,
you can buy a little seed, you can also attract
them in with artificial honeydews, which is
an interesting idea but I don’t think you
need to get too elaborate about it you can
just buy the organisms and put them in and
you’ll have them around you’ll see them
you may wanna buy these things so you can
learn to look at them to identify them.
Because they’re already in your garden probably,
or they’re gonna be after you grown something
and be a little more tolerant, you can tolerate
some bugs and that’s how you learn, get
a hand lens fifteen x, and you learn how to
look at the leaves, hold it up to your lens,
you got to check the light coming down so
you can learn look at cause when I use to
work under the microscope with 60 x power,
was what our working microscopes were like
and you could see a lot of detail but you
can learn to look through the little hand
lens with the same sort of detail.
Learn how everything looked on the big scope
then move to the hand lens, that’s what
I used in the field because you can’t carry
a microscope out there.
So you got to learn what these animals look
like and its marvelous experience to see some
of these little critters eating the bugs and
that’s a learning experience and that’s
your investment in the natural world and it
will be a payoff over time for a better garden
with less poison.
Wow, well said, I mean I think it’s so often
you think, bug it’s bad, time to spray it
right, that’s not the answer that nature
would have, that’s an answer that humans
would have and you know if we tried to like
rule over nature we’re bound to fail so
we need to just work with nature and live
with nature and encourage nature and encourage,
you know, different areas of our garden to
attract beneficials like if you’re not growing
some vegetables, grow some native, grow some
flowers that are gonna attract some beneficials
to your garden or your farm because they’re
gonna do some of the work for you so you don’t
have to spray it, if you’ve got beneficials
in your garden they’re gonna eat all the
bad bugs so you don’t have to deal with
it, right?
And so, I don’t think I even introduced
the praying mantis in my garden, but I’ll
see a little praying mantis around, oh my
god, a praying mantis, I got to like make
sure he doesn’t get hurt.
I put them in because I like to look at them,
they’re just spectacular things but they
eat all kinds of things, they eat bees, they
eat other, they’re a generalist predator.
The other little trick I should pass on, is
straw piles, I learned this myself.
You put a bunch of straw out maybe six to
eight inches high, put a little water on it
and the straw starts decomposing over the
next few days or weeks depending on the moisture,
and the decomposing straw produces a little
bit of a Nat, or something tiny and then what
happens is the spiders are coming in all the
time, they float in and they’ll start eating
those little critters because spiders, small
spiders they have to have small food, then
they end up eating each other, they become
cannibalistic and you’ll see on top of that
pile of straw a big hairy wolf spider these
are spiders that run across the ground they
don’t have webs, and they are powerful predators
and so that’s what’ll happen you’ll
essential create your own natural enemies.
I’m not against buying them.
So another point that I wanted to talk to
you guys about before we get into the tips
of this episode is like I have this motto
for pest control of escalation for example,
the first thing I do if I see the aphids on
my plants, I got my fingers I’m gonna smash
the aphids with my fingers, ima pick off caterpillars
or horn worms off my plants, I’m gonna go
out there at night with my uv light to see
them bloss fluorescence.
A flashlight or go out at night with my headlamp
on, find my slugs and seals, because the slugs
come out at night, right?
And then I’ll pick them off, but then you
know that’s the first step like manual control
like me use my physical labor, maybe if I
had kids, maybe get them involved, and the
second step if I can’t do it with the aphids
for example then ill spray them and hose them
off with water and ill spray them off with
a high pressure water.
Hand picking is good idea, handpicking is
a really simple thing, you can do a lot of
simple stuff like that when the population
gets big you got to like move into other strategies.
So the next thing I’ll do is ill spray the
soap then the next strategy, and then maybe
hopefully I’ll do it a couple times and
I’m not just gonna spray water, oh it doesn’t
work and go to the next thing, continue, like
wait a day, spray again, spray again and then
go back to even smushing and then I’ll do
the soap, escalate it higher and then maybe
after the soap, what would be a good thing
to do after soap.
Well pyrethrum is your last ditch, well that’s
last.
But after soap I might do like a soap with
neme oil, or something like that.
Neme oil would be good, or some sort of like,
maybe before that step I might do diatramethazurin
depending on the insect then maybe if the
neme oil and then maybe the pyrethrum . It’s
your last stop, a very short lived material,
you have an immediate effect doesn’t stay
around and it’s virtually nontoxic, you
got to protect yourself from everything you
use with insecticide, even soap, some people
get allergic to everything so I’d like to
avoid those things so if you wanna save your
crops, you know in a garden you could always
plant more, you don’t really have to go
nuts about it.
Some people like to think the natural world,
clean it up, and I think it’s a losing battle
don’t clean it up, it’s kind of great
just the way it is, just learn how to see
it and work with it.
Another thing I say is, sometimes if it’s
so bad I don’t even try to spray it, I just
sacrifice the plant, sacrificial plant, I
cut the plant down, I don’t even use it
in my compost if there is like a lot of insects
on it.
I might send it off site just to get rid of
it, and you know, that’s the step before
I even spray the pyrethrum in, so spraying
anything on your property whether it’s the
dr bronners or neme, or the pyrethrum or even
using Diaz can have a negative impact, not
only on the bad bugs but also the good ones
too, so then you could literally be shooting
yourself in the foot, because now you’re
killing the good bugs that would be eating
your bad bugs, otherwise so you should really,
in my opinion, try not to spray, especially
if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Ya know, if you don’t know how to recognize
the beneficials you could just be killing
things that are gonna be beneficial.
Sometimes you see a big black ground beetle,
a lot of people kill those they think they’re
roaches.
They just don’t know how to see them and
you got to practice learn how to see them
or look around for more information.
Information now is so wide spread a little
search on Google, will come up with a lot
of good information there’s free information
everywhere so educate yourself.
the other one I like to tell people about
is sweedalisel, you know almost forgot that,
and sweedalisel is a little low growing plant,
it’s a nice little flower, you can put it
on boarders or beds and it seeds itself in
and the little natural enemy that comes to
that will feed on mites, caterpillar eggs
all sorts of little critters.
And it’s called the oreus that’s the genus,
it’s a plant, it’s a predacious plant
bug small tiny little thing, and it takes
a while to learn to spot it.
But if you put sweedalisel in and start looking
at the blossoms after a while and you’ll
see them in their eating the fluids from the
blossoms.
ive seen it on, it seeds itself in the grape
areas, I was driving here down to the eco
farm and I saw these patches of white along
the roadsides of grape vineyards they’re
hip to it now, maybe they know that story.
Yeah so I guess, there are some tips, now
I wanna get into the real tips so that guys
don’t have to spray, use these tips before
you even think about spraying anything because
good growing practicing good garden practice
is the key to actually avoid having to spray
anything in the first place.
One of my biggest tips is to grow high quality
plants.
The more nutrient dense and high bricks, more
nutrients are in your soil, the better the
plant can actually create protein, and create
more complex proteins that bugs cannot digest,
complex proteins.
I mean using compost is one of those excellent
ways and, let’s hear some more ways, some
more of these tips from dr bill Olkowski.
Well that’s a good intro, I’ll give you
a series of tips that I learned and one of
them is transplanting.
Transplanting means that you grow the seedling
in a warm place inside the house for instance
and then you put it out and you wait for,
put it out when the first two leaves show
up because before the first two leaves the
plant is sensitive to damage, a snail or a
slug can come and kill off a lot of seedlings
in one night and then all your time and effort
has been wasted, so when you get it out and
the seedling, and get it started, you’re
getting it past the most vulnerable stage
in a plants life.
So you got to transplant and when you transplant
you then wait and now, all the other problems
show up.
Now tips to think about is plant materials
that raise another insect that doesn’t go
on your crop.
And one of these is anice, you know, fennyl,
which in my area it is a weed, it even has
its own aphid and the way this works, is it
doesn’t go on, that aphid doesn’t go on
your crops.
It has its own natural enemies that come and
eat on the aphid, and when it eats up the
aphids on the fennyl it moves over on broccoli
aphids or other aphids that are in your garden,
so you wanna have alternative plant materials
that you grow or as weeds or even old broccoli
plants you don’t have to pull them out when
they’re finished producing broccoli just
let them grow a seed, the pest will stay on
it, the pest aide particularly, broccoli’s
got a problem with an aphid.
So now you can have natural enemies on the
aphid survive and help you with the next crop
of broccoli.
So those are like little tips you can sort
of learn how to use those and look at your
weeds, look at your weeds and get yourself
a hand lens, and study the insects on those
weeds because sometimes, very likely the weed
has its own pests and they’re not gonna
go on your crops, they’re different kinds
of animals.
There’s five thousand species of aphids,
there’s all kind of animals, we can use
the same idea for other plant material there’s
actually catalogs you can buy from cornflower
farms for instance, has a catalog about plants
that you grow that attract beneficial insects.
So that’s one of your strategies, is seed
them in and I also recommend compost.
Compost changes the fertility conserves water,
you got to watch out some of the animals like
to live in composts, when you go out and look
for damage, you see some damage, you might
have to go look around for a cutworm or a
little stick around the plant, if you’ve
seen the seedlings been chewed up, it may
be a cut worm, probably likely in fact.
Look at the plants that are being damaged,
to understand who it is that is eating them.
Birds have beak marks and leaves, And you
might wanna put a screen over those, and see
what I can think of, other things, snail barriers
you know you have copper strips you can buy
those or you can use electrical.
Electrical fences for slugs basically and
the iron.
The slug o is a Ferris ammonium sulfate is
bait for slugs and snails it degrades into
a fertilizer so that’s not a really bad
slugicide the one metatalhyde is the bad one,
because the dogs can eat it and die so I always
avoid that.
Cardboards rings around your seedlings and
they are sort of a semi permeable barrier.
The slugs will come along the snails will
come along and hit the little cardboard barrier,
like a little wall, like you’re making a
fort for your plants.
They can climb over but likely not, it’s
just another strategy it’s easy it’s cheap
it’s just something to do.
Now the other idea I had that might be useful
to a lot of people is let the seedling, let
some of your food go to seed, carrots, charred
is a good one then you have these charred
stalks go up, the little seed spew all over
the place.
So the little seedlings that come up, you
wanna plant something else in that spot, you
pull the seedling up and you have a little
salad with those little guys and that helps
take up the niches for weeds and so everything
else you can handle mostly by hand if you’ve
got a small enough space.
And you can also tolerate a lot of damage,
plant extra if you have a pest problem that’s
really chronic you know it’s gonna show
up every year, plant extra don’t worry about
it, give it away so it gets destroyed, you’re
not on a production farm, you can tolerate
things.
Fact is most gardeners are always busy giving
away their extra stuff, so don’t worry about
it.
So I think that’s a few little tips that
might open up things for you, there’s other
things, in my area in southern California
we have lizards in our gardens and lizards
eat ants and I always like to keep the ant
population down.
Ants like don’t like water, they always
like to protect their colonies from moisture
because they like in the soil, so you can
flood ants out and discourage them from coming
to that area, and ants protects aphids, and
so you may wanna keep the ant population down
and encourage them to move away from your
plants, so you can also trap slugs and snails
by upside down flower pots they love to go
into that terra cotta kind of thing, so I used
to pick up, just put the pots out turn them
over, if there’s a snail or a slug in it
crush it then that’ll attract the next slug
or snail so you can build traps like that
that are very simple.
And just leave the flower pots here.
We have anything else on that list, we were
gonna try to work off an outline.
Barriers you can use for gophers and vertebrae
that may come in like rabbits, squirrels,
brown squirrels problem for each particular
fruit like a squash, you should build a little
cage for, so squirrels wouldn’t eat it,
you know the damn squirrels would come in
and eat my squash, take a bit chunk out of
it, you know.
And the other thing, are area we have a lot
of snakes.
Rattlesnakes, so I make sure my plants were
high so I could look under them so I wouldn’t
be surprised by finding a rattlesnake living
in my garden which is not the nicest thing
to find, no, especially when they’re real
close.
What about planting flowers?
Oh flowers, I’m glad you reminded me of
that, flowers, beneficial insects eat nectar,
and so that gives them some more life and
they’ll stay in your garden, so diversify
your garden with extra space somewhere, put
some flowers in.
nest urchins are good, everybody likes them,
they’re easy they are cheap, and they’re
edible.
That’s the other thing that’s funny, you
can plant things like that, and what else,
extra floral nactories, is one that’s got
extra floral.
And they feed their honeydew, essentially
a sweetener from the plant that feeds beneficial
insects.
So tolerate some pests, it’s not the end
of the world and you learn what the animal
looks like, how to identify it again, and
you watch for natural enemies on those exotic
aphids or something, and your broccoli, just
watch them, and you’ll see that, learn to
identify the natural enemies that are killing
the aphids, that’s something to learn about.
So how’s that for a few little tips, that’s
great, so I mean I wish you were here to get
all his tips from his talk and I’m gonna
share with some of you guys his tips in my
last episode.
But he also wrote a book on it, unfortunately
the book is out of print but it’s still
available on amazon, so what’s this book,
I wish it was still in print because this
is what everybody needs to learn about growing
organically is not just picking up an organic
spray but the steps to do before you even
pick up the spray.
Well you could look on amazon for Olkowski
my last name, and it’s a book I reprinted
now, that my wife and I wrote back in nineteen
seventies, called the city peoples book of
raising food, there’s a nice little chapter
on soils, and plant nutrition, and some composting
tips and it’s written in a very nice style,
and we used to sell it for five bucks I don’t
know what amazon is selling it for, but it
was really nice readable book, bar some really
thick heavy books that I have written, one
is called common sense pest control, it’s
a seven hundred page book, we used to joke
that to control the insects we would drop
the book on them.
So now you can actually look in that book
and get a real good introduction to insects,
the natural enemies and the tools that I use
against the pests that are nontoxic.
There are soap solutions, there’s water,
washing things with water, and oh roses were
another one that we try to talk about.
Roses have their own aphids so again that
aphid doesn’t go over on broccoli, doesn’t
go over on any of your other garden plants,
and so you can actually learn how to use them,
those plants for your own benefit.
So how’s that okay?
That’s awesome, so uh, dr bill Olkowski,
if somebody wants to get a hold of you, read
your blog read all the information you’ve
put online, he’s been doing this, gardening
for forty fifty years now, how can they get
a hold of you.
Well I have a blog, I wrote poetry on it,
got my paintings and stuff uh, and there’s
some articles there that might be useful to
you.
It’s called entomological philosopher.
And so it’s kind of, you can roam around,
you can write me there, there is an email
address or just search for my name, you might
be able to find my books with my name, Olkowski.
Like an old cow on a ski.
Alright doctor, thank you for being on the
show today, if you guys enjoy this episode
here please be sure to give a thumbs up to
let me know, also be sure to do some of the
practices he says, it’ll definitely improve
your gardening and your organic gardening
style.
Um also be sure to click that subscribe button
right down below because the next episode,
also with doctor Olkowski, is one more about
basically using good bugs to kill the bad
bugs, so that you don’t have to.
So stay tuned for that and of course be sure
to check my past episodes, over twelve hundred
episodes now on this YouTube channel, dedicated
to teaching you guys all aspects of growing
food, biologically and organically.
So with that my name is John Kohler with growing
your greens dot com.
We’ll see you next time and until then remember,
keep on growing.
