Pesticide Companies Don't Want You To Know How To Use TRAP CROPS To Repel Garden Pests!

so well this is one way that you can keep insect pests off the most coveted vegetables in your vegetable garden but what if i told you there is a better way a way that these pesticide companies don't want you to know because you won't be spraying nearly as much of their product and all it takes is a little bit of strategic planning and garden design i'm talking about trap cropping and how you can use trap cropping to keep pests off your favorite vegetables in your garden if you're new to the channel please consider subscribing and hitting the bell to receive new video notifications and check out our amazon storefront and spreadshop in the video description for a list of the gardening products i use and awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated trap cropping is based on a simple concept and that is that insects are just like us they have favorite foods too so if in one hand i have a bag of frozen peas and in the other hand i have a well marbled ribeye steak which one would you choose now if you're on a deserted island and you have no food you'd probably be thrilled to have the bag of frozen peas however if you have no food restrictions the overwhelming majority of us are going to pick the well-marbled steak trap cropping says that insects have favorite foods as well so why not find out what insects are the biggest pests in your region and then interplant their favorite foods scattered throughout your garden strategically as sacrificial plants to attract those insects that way the insects all flock to them and leave the rest of your harvests alone in previous videos i have showed you how to use interplanting to your benefit to help repel pests from your garden and my favorite method is to interplant alliums onions garlic and shallots in between my most pest prone plants like my tomatoes and my peppers and alliums give off an unpleasant scent that helps repel annoying pests throughout the season now this does work quite well especially early in the season when pest populations are fairly low and haven't exploded yet but later in the season the pest populations tend to grow to such huge quantities and there's so much competition between pests that eventually they will become hungry enough that they will just deal with the odors of the alliums and they will start going after your pests the other problem is my onions and garlic mature well before i'm done harvesting my tomatoes peppers and other pest susceptible plants so i wind up having to pull them out of my garden and then my most susceptible plants are fully vulnerable to the pests typically the solution to this problem is to begin a regular spraying routine of insecticides to try and control the overall population of pests in your garden and while in extremely buggy areas such as mine and points further south it may be unavoidable to have some kind of insecticide spraying routine you can greatly reduce that routine using trap cropping and in other climates that don't have as much pest pressure you may be able to eliminate a spraying routine altogether all of the information that i'm giving you in this video came from actual studies done by cooperative extensions and universities so make sure you check the video description because i will link to the studies there here on the southeastern coast of north carolina the most awful pest in my garden is the leaf-footed bug and to a lesser extent its ugly cousins the shield bug and the stink bug they are absolutely miserable here in july august and early september the populations are out of control and they will decimate your tomatoes cucumbers and eggplants they have little sucking beaks on them they will go and they will place thousands of holes on all of your fruits and ruin them so two years ago i did some research because all the spraying in the world won't control the population and i wanted to see if there was a better way to manage them that's when i learned that alabama cooperative extension specialists had been experimenting with nk 300 sorghum and peridovic type sunflowers as trap crops for leaf-footed bugs what they were doing was they were planting the trap crops six to ten feet away from their closest tomato plants and what they had found was that both were extremely attractive to the leaf-footed bugs so attractive that they were keeping them away from their tomatoes with pretty regular success so when i read that i immediately went out and i purchased peridovic sunflowers from this company southern exposure seed exchange and i have been planting these now this will be my third season that i'm planting these seeds and they're still coming up with almost 100 germination and i've been experimenting with them and i have confirmed the research of the alabama cooperative extension not only are these highly attractive to leaf-footed bugs they are also attractive to shield bugs stink bugs and even japanese beetles luckily i don't have very many japanese beetles here but if i do get a stray beetle they usually flock to the sunflowers however what i learned is it's not just as simple as planting the sunflowers and walking away first off you have to stagger your planting of the sunflowers you have to have sunflowers that are planted ahead of the tomatoes and sunflowers that are following behind the tomatoes and i will have to have a third planting of these as well because you need to keep them relatively fresh for as long as the tomatoes and peppers and other susceptible plants in your garden are alive now these sunflowers grew as volunteers they reseed themselves so every year i get a couple of free sunflower plants these i started in trays and manually planted now here is what i learned from the sunflowers number one when the sunflowers are perfect and in full bloom they are not as attractive to the leaf-footed bugs they are actually more attractive when the sunflowers begin to die back they will flock to them like crazy and they will also lay eggs on them and this is extremely beneficial for a couple of reasons number one it concentrates the bugs on usually the dying back flowers that the bees are no longer interested in so come night when the sun starts to set and all the bees go away you can take a natural insecticide like pyrethrin and you can soak down the leaf-footed bugs and all of their nymphs and their eggs and kill off the entire population without spraying any of your crops and when you use something like pyrethrin it dissipates by the morning because it's natural and it has a rapid half-life and it rapidly oxidizes and begins fading away with exposure to air and sunlight so it'll be safe for the bees come the morning and also planting the sunflowers all around they bring in bees during the day when the pests are less active and they look beautiful so keeping them in constant bloom is a constant magnet for the pollinators and then at night they attract the bad bugs that you can get rid of in a controlled fashion and i have found that as long as you keep the sunflowers strategically planted around your garden they are wonderful magnets for leaf-footed bugs shield bugs and stink bugs and they really will keep the majority of them off your tomato plants when it comes to growing cucumbers and squash one of your biggest pests is the cucumber beetle in many climates they can absolutely overtake a crop and decimate them in no time flat but luckily there is a trap crop for cucumber beetles as well that is extremely effective and that trap crop is this blue hubbard squash again according to the specialists at the alabama cooperative extension this blue hubbard squash was 47 times more effective at attracting cucumber beetles than their main crops so they were fantastically efficient at pulling over the cucumber beetles and keeping them off their main crops now what i would recommend is experiment with inter planting so maybe make every sixth to eighth plant or something like this a blue hubbard squash i'm a little bit behind the game i already have my main crop squashing cucumbers out however i usually get about three different plantings of cucumbers and squash in my climate usually there aren't a lot of pests out early in the year that affects my first crop so i'm going to start these blue hubbard squash right now to try and get them going so they will be highly protective for my next crop that will mature in july when my pest pressure starts going off the charts as bad as i made leaf-footed bug sound in my environment the number one pest that i probably have the most problems with are cabbage worms and other caterpillars they come out early in the year they last all summer and they go late all the way until frost and they absolutely decimate my brassicas pretty much all of my cabbage this year was a fail because i had the the white moth active very early and even over the winter during mild stretches they would decimate my plants and i didn't spray them enough so i thought i have to find a trap crop for these as well and luckily the university of hawaii cooperative extension has done a lot of research and they have a solution to this problem as well and that solution are mustard greens mustard greens are incredibly attractive to cabbage worms and other kinds of worms and other moths so i am going to start planting mustard greens throughout my garden because they are supposed to be one of their favorite foods and the good news is when it comes to growing mustard greens because they are so spicy and hot a lot of people actually don't really care for them that much now if you do love mustard greens i suggest when you plant mustard greens that you want to harvest for yourself that you plant them underneath some kind of insect netting that way the mustard greens will stay insect free however plant a sacrificial crop off to the side that you have no intention of eating that you just want to trap the white flies and the moths and the caterpillars so plant a strategic crop that you want to be eaten by bugs that you're going to share with those pests and then anything you want to eat cover them and grow them separately on your own and that right there are three separate trap crops that you should try planting in your garden to feed the pests and keep them happy give them their favorite foods so they stay away from your favorite foods so everybody i sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and ring that notification bell so you're notified when we release more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products that i use in my garden in general they are all linked down below in my amazon storefront in the video description so give that a click if you want to see the actual products that i use in my garden for real and while you're there check out my spreadshop link in the video description for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video dale and i just got back from our walk and he walks so nicely on his gentle leader but the problem with the leader is it itches his face so when i take it off he does the funniest thing go dale show everybody what you do that's so funny go ahead [Applause] he's gonna go roll around on the carpet now oh his face is so itchy [Laughter] i'll scratch your face for you buddy come here come here come here come here you little nugget oh i know how itchy it is well i tried this is what he prefers

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 197,058

Keywords: trap crops, trap crop, trap cropping, how to use trap crops, using trap crops, repel garden pests, garden pests, garden pest control, garden pest, pest control, leaf footed bugs, stink bugs, shield bugs, japanese beetles, cucumber beetles, caterpillars, moths, growing, raised bed, garden, gardening, food forest, vegetable garden, vegetable gardening, organic gardening, gardening tips, garden tips, gardening tips and tricks, gardening hacks, how to, diy, millennial gardener

Id: j8N4rwnM92I

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Mon May 09 2022