Pest Control

Pest Control - Inevitably as part of learning about plant pest control and plant/crop diseases, we may occasionally need to bring pests, diseased samples and weeds into Living Under One Sun (LUOS).


In biology, if a pest or disease has to be transported from its location, the basic standard is to quarantine the pest or diseased sample in a sterilised container. Strictly laid down rules on transportation, hygiene, viewing and display of the specimen are followed.
To protect the plants and crops we are growing at Living Under One Sun, we have to adopt some of these pest control practices before we can introduce/bring pests, diseased samples or weeds into the site.

These are the basic rules I feel that we must adopt (please feel free to add to the list):

• we must quarantine the "foreign" guest in an enclosed clean see-through container - a clean (inside and outside) see-through jar will do in our case.
• we must look at the specimen through its enclosure (we should not be touching the specimen). If we do have a "desperate" need to touch the specimen, we must wash our hands afterwards before we touch the soil, plants, vegetables or trees on our site.
• the specimen must be removed intact and still in its quarantined container from our site, Living Under One Sun.

These are very basic biology and chemistry practices. We must adopt these basic practices.

Weeds
To state the obvious, weeds are part of all gardens and allotments. At Living Under One Sun (LUOS)we have our share.

Optimizing our time as volunteers at Living Under One Sun is a necessity.

We need to agree on weed control practices including effective disposal of the weeds. We already know about composting. We need to agree on immediate effective disposal of each weed, based on the type of weed.

It is impractical to spend inordinate quality sowing and harvesting time weeding the plant beds or the pathways alongside the plant beds.

The fruit trees are already bearing fruits, the weeds are strangling their productivity at the moment.

We can effectively control the weeds. We need tested and well laid out weed control and disposal practices. We can adopt, modify and enhance well tried and tested practices for LUOS.


Copyright © Abi. 2010. Written for Living Under One Sun (LUOS). All rights reserved.