Organic Wine

by Tony on October 21, 2008

Last week I was sitting and feasting and drinking and chatting with a very nice lady at one of the Michel-Schlumberger harvest luncheons. Not surprisingly, the topic soon turned to gardening.

She told me she had started a small vegetable garden in her back yard for the very first time and was quite dismayed when aphids completely decimated her beautiful broccoli plants. She was asking me about problem pests in the organic garden and how we dealt with them – what the best organic pesticides were and how and when we applied them. She was quite surprised when I informed her that we did not spray pesticides. Nothing. Ever. Not in the garden, not in the vineyard.

We don’t spray pesticides because we don’t need to. It’s not because we’re simply lucky or blessed with a special environment of some kind — it’s because we prepare a line of defense against the bad bugs well ahead of time.

As I’ve preached before, spraying the bad bugs is a bad thing. Not only does spraying, organic or not, take care of only a fraction of the pest population but it also kills the good guys. These good guys – the lacewings and ladybugs and soldier beetles – are the only ones who can and will control the pest populations in your garden. Yeah, those aphids may get any early start your broccoli plants but if you step back and do nothing I promise you that, eventually, Nature will do what she always does and balance will be restored.

This is a promise with a catch.

Good bugs eat bad bugs and good bugs need a home. That’s why anytime I start a veggie garden I start by planting flowers. If we supply these beneficial bugs with the food and habitat that they need to flourish then these guys will do the dirty work for us. Just one example of this is ladybugs. A single Ladybug adult can consume up to 1,000 aphids in a single day! Ladybugs also LOVE Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota). The obvious take-home message here is that if you plant some Queen Anne’s Lace to attract the Ladybugs they will return the favor by taking care of your aphids. So instead of cursing those aphid outbreaks, rejoice! It simply means that you have a nice food base for your Ladybugs.

The reason I’m addressing this issue now is that now is the perfect time to prepare your garden for next year’s onslaught of pests. With the impending rains (at least in this part of the world) any beneficial insect attracting perennials should be planted now. By Spring they should be well established and ready to provide good bugs with a good home. The internet is a great resource to locate and learn about these plants. If you are interested, here is a good place to start:

http://www.farmerfred.com/plants_that_attract_benefi.html

So plant those plants and attract those good bugs and enjoy feasting on luscious veggies in the Spring. And if you have any questions or comments I’d be happy to try and help.

Super Weed

by Tony on August 28, 2008

Hairy Fleabane

Crush 2008 is on! And that means plenty of work to do. And that’s why I have maybe 10 minutes of “spare” time to do some blogging before the press is finished with the 3.2 tons of pinot blanc we picked this morning. I’m in luck – the latest issue of California Agriculture sits on top of one of the many piles on my desk and a headline article catches my eye: Glyphosate-resistant Hairy Fleabane Documented in the Central Valley.

For those not up on Ag Speak, Glyphosate is the active ingredient in the world’s most important herbicide, Roundup, and Hairy Fleabane is a major weed in California. Roundup is commonly sprayed in vineyards to kill weeds between and under the vines. It’s been used (and abused) for many, many years. And that’s the problem. Weeds, like pretty much any organism, can and will eventually become tolerant of the poisons used to eradicate them.

The problem here is twofold. The first and more obvious problem is that once a weed becomes resistant to Glyphosate we will be unable to control it’s growth and development of other herbicides, probably even more environmentally unfriendly, will be necessary. Secondly, and much more alarming, is the fact that we simply just don’t know the limit of potential resistance. In other words, because of man’s reckless spraying the weeds are getting tougher and tougher. And what happens when our nemesis the Hairy Fleabane becomes impervious to any nasty chemical we can throw at it? It becomes a “Super Weed.” And there’s nothing super about that.

So what can we do? The problem is very complicated but here’s one thing we can start with – stop spraying Roundup.