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  • From: Jerome Rigot <rigot.3@osu.edu>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Advice for a corn farmer vexed by bugs nesting in clover?
  • Date: Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:09:40 -0400

Why assuming that the bugs that came to the clover are pests? The article does not make that clear, and generally clover provide habitat to many beneficial insects. So, what if the bugs where good bugs and trigger happy, anti-bugs farmer sprayed them because they were bugs now living in his garden?

Just a thought.

Jerome

At 06:24 PM 8/12/2009, you wrote:
Two thoughts come to mind. One you can buy beneficial insects that eat the bad guys. There are companies like Rincon-Vitova in California that specialize in Integrated Pest Management and sell specific predators for a variety of bugs. (www.rinconvitova.com) Secondly, I would think that including a variety of other plants that provide habitat for beneficial insects would have helped. Part of the problem may also have beenthe monoculture of corn. A think a more integrated holistic approach maybe needed than just introducing one new plant into a monoculture. Finally, commercial fertilizer may up yield in the shortrun, but it is all part of a strategy that is doomed to fail in the long run. Killing and depleting the soil with chemical fertilizers while planting monoculture crops is the problem not the solution. -----Original Message----- From: sean forde <sforde@gmail.com> To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org Sent: Wed, Aug 12, 2009 12:36 pm Subject: [permaculture] Advice for a corn farmer vexed by bugs nesting in clover? In Blake Hurst's article, "The Omnivore’s Delusion: Against the gri-intellectuals" he complains that planting clover to produce nitrogen ad an unwanted side effect - bugs - and that forced him to use an nsecticide. Does anyone have any real world experience to help him out? Here is an excerpt from the article ( "A few other problems come to mind. The last time I planted a cover crop, he clover provided a perfect habitat in early spring for bugs, bugs that I ad to kill with20an insecticide. We do not normally apply insecticides, but e did that year. Of course, you can provide nitrogen with legumes by using longer crop rotation, growing clover one year and corn the next. But that ses twice as much water to produce a corn crop, and takes twice as much and to produce the same number of bushels. We are producing twice the food e did in 1960 on less land, and commercial nitrogen is one of the main easons why. It may be that we decide we would rather spend land and water han energy, but Pollan never mentions that we are faced with that choice." ______________________________________________ ermaculture mailing list ermaculture@lists.ibiblio.org ubscribe or unsubscribe here: ttp://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture oogle command to search archives: ite:https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture searchstring _______________________________________________ permaculture mailing list permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org Subscribe or unsubscribe here: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture Google command to search archives: site:https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/permaculture searchstring




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