I never thought insect attacks would happen to me. I mean sure, I knew it intellectually, but somehow I thought there just weren’t insects in my garden! Turns out I was badly mistaken. My garden is alive after all.
Leaf miners
After noticing some squiggly white lines on Virender and Noah, I thought there may be some pests around and sure enough, with the Internet it wasn’t difficult to find out. Here’s what I saw:
It turns out that the larvae of these insects burrow inside the leaf and eat it up. This makes them immune from most sprays since they can’t be touched. So I did the only thing I could. I found the end of the white lines where I could see the yellowish larvae and pinched them through, hopefully killing it. And indeed, I never saw a line progress after a pinch.
But many of my leaves are attacked like this, and soon even Fathima and Chun li had them :( . Today I saw full grown leaf miner (a tiny yellow and black fly) sitting on a leaf. Squished it of course, but I don’t know how many there are…
Stalk insects
The stalks of all four are covered with little brown insects. I don’t know if they damage the plants, but they may retard their grown. Scraping them off is no help as they just come back.
Compost tea
Following some advice on the net, I brewed some compost tea by soaking compost in water for 3 days and then spraying it on the plants. But I didn’t notice any cessation of leaf miner or stalk insect activity.
Neem leaf extract
This seems to be working. The maid soaked and boiled some neem leaves. I sprayed the extract onto the young saplings. That was yesterday, and I’m not sure if it’s worked or not but it seems to have helped. Neem seed oil is supposed to be better, but I don’t know how to extract the oil from the seeds.
Apparently neem doesn’t kill the insects outright. When they ingest it, they “forget” to eat, mate and even fly! This of course, breaks their life cycle and kills them off. It also doesn’t harm beneficial insects like spiders which don’t actually feed off the plant.
I could go to the horticultural society and buy some insecticide, but my purpose in growing vegetables is to become self sufficient, and if I can’t make the insecticide myself, I would rather not use it. Let’s see though. If the situation becomes too bad I may not have a choice.
Only a few days more and I’m going to transplant the four once more into their final gamlas! I’ll try and post some pics, but since I’ll have to take them with the phone camera, they might not be that grand…
Hope that works for you, I remember an extract prepared from Neem seeds helps not only miners and Aphids and other pests too. Since my sister bought me a commercial neem extract I never tried it, but once that supply's gone, I'm gonna try to prepare one myself. Now, I gotta look for that exact recipe…
Neem sounds like a good idea… I hope it works.
Bhagwad, I have been growing tomatoes and potatoes long back before I joined you in ICFAI. The insect on your leaves will slowly eat them up and you will find some dark spot or holes on your leaves. The best way is to keep them covered with fine mesh/net. This will provide them adequate sunlight as well as keep away tiny flies.
You will shortly get small tomatoes which will be green in the beginning and will grow red. These plants are very beautiful on dining table, the only issue I see with the tomatoes plant is that they grow up to very many roots. Yes thats true, u will be able to lift the entire pot with the help of plant stem. The roots will closely knit together and will hold entire compost or sand.
You can try your experiment with potatoes too. Take a potato, place it in a glass of water such that half of the potato sink in the water and half remains above the water. Do change water for 2-3 days. Keep it where you can get sunlight. After you see some shoots, bury this potato in your pot. Wait for 2-3 days and you will have your small plants. They will grow into a climber. You can dig your pot and get potatoes whenever you want. The nodes below the surface will grow enough for your requirement.
You can name your potato plant as GERMINATOR… on a lighter note…
In reply to Sajid
Hey Sajid,
Thanks a lot for your advice. I intend to put up a netting of some sort once the tomatoes begin to emerge. Also, I'm glad you brought up potatoes. I need to grow those as well and I'll certainly try using your technique!