I am sorry for only responding now. What a crazy week of traveling, things are slowing down a bit in that department.
For sure, chemical treatment is rarely the option. But sometimes it is needed even if only to help establish the plants. I had to throw some poison out for a snail attack on my small fynbos plants. They devoured everything. But after the plants established themselves, the slugs and snails had a feast without destroying the whole plant.
Slugs and snails I used beer traps, not sure if it's the smell or they drowned in the effort of getting to the plants!
I need to try this! Luckily, things have been growing so well recently that the need for any solution to keep the bugs away is not needed any longer. The salad rocket leaves are almost 20 cm long and I am eating so much of it on a daily basis now. Wish I could somehow share or sell it!
Trade with people in the region if possible when you have excess. Finding ways to combat bugs I have not had much success.
I need to actually ask my girlfriend’s parents as they are on the whatsapp groups and all of that. Some people in the area might want some! I have been harvesting every day for myself now and there is still so much left.
We still have a local group selling all kinds of products, this morning I noticed eggs up for sale from a farm, people are connected so a good idea to try.
That is the preferred way to go. Going to the shop and supporting their arbitrary price hikes is just getting out of hand these days. Some products doubled in price in less than 2 years. I am not buying the idea that producing that product doubled in two years. Rather, we are feeding share and stock holders' pockets and not the farmers.
Now consider how we feel, buying pork at R2,99/kg, chicken under Rand per kilo around 1990, cheapest in town direct from a proper butcher, now pork avg R100/kg, chicken approx R70/kg, no butchery available these are store prices, it's a total rip off.
I used to buy for family of 5, half pig, lamb and hind quarter of beef monthly with one or two chickens, selected the meat hanging in cold room, collected in the afternoon packed the way I requested, deep freeze at home for a month now no electricity? WTF