Outside, trees and flowers are budding out and some are blooming already. My mother here in Mississippi has fruit trees and every year, she gets worms in her fruit. She has asked me to help her spray her trees before the insects can lay their eggs. We may already be too late!
I have suggested that she use diatomaceous earth on her trees with re-applications after every rain. I have never used this substance on such a grand scale as fruit trees (fortunately the trees are still not fully grown). Before I move back to California on May 1, I hope to get the powder on the trees and have my mother keep records for me of insect problems throughout the summer.
This leads me to what I really want to say this month. I am taking a class called Advanced Prose Writing. In this class, we are learning that writing is more than just repeating what others tell you. Writing encompasses research and studying something you don't know so that you can teach others. Gardening is the same way.
If you do not TEST your garden methods, how will you know if they work or not? Others can tell you, as I have done with this garden pest topic, what to do, but have you really tried any of it? Have you thought up your own concoctions to try? Knowledge is experimenting and learning through doing, not just reading what others use. You have to find what fits your garden, test new ideas, and then spread the word.
So in the hopes that ideas I have gathered from others will work, I am testing them just to see what happens. I also have my mother using milk and water mixtures on her trees. She bought a 1 gallon sprayer bottle to apply. She'll need a bigger one since she has so many trees! Since I'll be going back to California, I won't have a yard to test much in. I really hate not having money for a house. So I will be using my mother's wide expanse as a test field. She just follows my instructions and reports back to me.
So if you have a pest, get all your ideas and notions together this year and test them out! If they don't work, then you'll know. Use one type of control for at least a month or perhaps use one control per season for better results. Sure it will take forever to find the right stuff, but eventually when you do, you will love the results!
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