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RE: Comment Challenge for Hive Gardeners! And Don't Forget the New Garden Journal Challenge starts Oct 1!

in HiveGarden2 years ago

Aaaahhhhh: this is SUCH a fascinating subject - and thread.... I could ramble on here for hours, but will try to be concise... I come from a climate (S. W. Scotland) where slugs, snails and aphids eat all plants, and midges, clegs and mosquitoes eat all humans. Even this particularly harsh year for biting insects in Italy doesn't come close ... So my general feeling, being outside of Scotland, is that most things are tolerable/ managable.
Since studying permaculture, biodynamics, lunar cycles and the like - I started to wake up/ have more confidence in, my holistic instinct about insect life. My sense is that insects are simply an expression of our collective conscious + our interrelationship with Gaia Sophia: anything 'proliferating' and/ or 'inconvenient' for us humans as we insert ourselves into natural ecosystems, is a symptom of soil, immediate environment and the elements. So there are limitations tobthe usefulness of our interfering - in the same way that our human health depends on our capacity to find equilibrium with our environment and relationships.
The most efficacious 'medicine' I've used, on a particularly dis-eased lemon tree outside my house, is soapy water. Organic soap mixed wuth tapwater, in a pump sprayer. I've had incredible success in balancing out multiple issues of stress-related funghi and then aphids , ants and other insects that have joined in the dynamic work of bringing the tree back to the earth... The tree feels more cared for, and has had a lot of offerings and good vibes gifted to it, and a very necessary blanket in winter. 😍🌞💐
My plant, seed, cuttings choices tend to be local, hardy, in-season type things - and I would never plant on bare soil or in rows or unnatural layering. I know that a good biodiversity and complex layering, companion planting, optimising microclimates, etc, is essential to not having pest problems 🙏🌈💚🌍🥰