Pests aren't much of a problem in our gardens anymore - today we share why! Come to SCRUBFEST II: www.thesurvivalgardener.com/scrubfest-2023/ Get Grocery Row Gardening: amzn.to/3RoCj5U David's Other Gardening Books: amzn.to/3PKLZGC Subscribe to the newsletter: thesurvivalgardener.us3.list-manage.com/subscribe/post?u=d1c57e318ab24156698c41249&id=1f74a21dc8 Compost Your Enemies t-shirts: www.aardvarktees.com/products/compost-your-enemies David's gardening blog: www.thesurvivalgardener.com Thank you all for watching. Enjoy the fall weather!

Excellent information. I've spent 40 plus years gardening without ever spraying anything and have always had plenty to eat (and share). I recently moved into the middle of BIG AG in Illinois. I have an acre and every year I;ve planted 10 shrubs and 3 trees around the perimeter. After just 4 years, I've gotten my FIRST EVER praying mantis. We have a fine "crop" of bumblebees now too. It's exciting to see the changes in just a few years. I feel like I'm giving Big Ag the Illinois salute (middle finger--ha!)

Wish I could walk around your garden. I'm 71 years of age. Grew up on 5th generation small farm of 134 acres. Prople were judged how weed free and perfect the rows look in the garden. Now that I find it Impossible to keep the garden pretty and weed free I have about given up. 2 failed years trying to do the garden by myself. Wish I had known about your type of gardening years ago. It totally makes sense. All the farms had hedge rows where quail, phesants, rabbits all thrived. Not only did all of that vanish but now I'm surrounded by 2,000 acres of solar pannel fields. Glad I'm 71 and not 17. So sad ! Keep up the good work young man.

My friends the wasps do such a thorough job cleaning my plants I barely get to see even the charismatic caterpillars like swallowtails. And they're very chill around me as I work. I heard of some research suggesting that wasps can recognize human individuals and whether or not they've been aggressive towards wasps in the past. I have some native asters that volunteered around the border of my pumpkin patch and see SUCH a DIVERSITY of pollinators on them. bumblebee, honeybee, wasps, native sweat bees, pollinating flies, beetles, and butterflies!

Regarding #3. I learned this the hard way when my family and I spent a year caretaking a small banana farm in Costa Rica. I brought a ton of seeds with me, thinking I was going to have the best garden ever. I ended up having the worst garden ever, the only thing that did well was okra. We quickly learned to forget about our usual staples like tomatoes and corn , and learned to harvest and use yucca, taro, and yams…things that wanted to grow there. I couldn’t grow herbs to save my life, but culantro grew like dandelions everywhere. Even now, that we’ve been back in the US almost 15 years, one of our favorite meals is “Costa Rica Spaghetti “ which is basically a bolognese sauce flavored with cilantro (which is a poor substitute for culantro, but as close as we can get). Now we’re in Missouri and I’m learning to appreciate dew berries, persimmons, nettles, and ramps because that’s what grows easily here.

Grew pumpkins under tobacco on heavily mulched ground this year, and fed them a solution of fetid swamp water, pee, and water every week. Very little insect pressure and incredible production.

This year I got toads! The funny thing is, before they showed up there were tons of caterpillars! You can actually see the toads eating stuff around the garden around dawn. Now the only plants that are still getting eaten are in a tall raised bed that the toads can’t get to.

I used ‘chemicals’ twice this Spring/Summer, two doses of Spinosad on a 5’ X 8’ bed of sweet corn. I’m on a .25 acre lot in the N Texas exurbs and I’ve been growing groceries (chickens, fruit, veg, herbs) for five years. My entire backyard is now a food forest. Three years ago I decided a natural approach to dealing with garden pests was the healthiest, most effective way to go. I provide year round food and habitat for frogs and birds and my insect pest issues have dropped to nearly nil. Birds eat the bugs and frogs deal with snails and slugs. About three $15 bags of bird seed carries the local ‘flock’ through the winter and a 100 gallon plastic ‘pond’ with a little solar fountain pump is a perfect breeding area for frogs. About the only drawback to this system is that I end up sharing a good bit of my plums with the birds and squirrels, a trade I’m happy to make.

My granddaughter was worried about some holes in some salad leaves we were picking once. I told her it was OK and we could eat the holes...😀

I used to live in San Francisco, in an apartment down the hill from a small grocery store. One day I bought a cabbage at the store and when I opened it up at home, it had a big old, fat old, squiggly caterpillar in it. I stormed up the very steep hill, cabbage in hand, and showed it to the store owner. He kinda laughed and said, "That's how you can tell a plant can support life, your life." Haha... I saw his point. That was 40 years ago, so I guess they still sold organic produce, without fanfare, in markets in San Francisco. Yes, gratitude for bugs is the attitude in an organic garden. Sharing is caring. :)

God bless You !!! you made me feel so much better about my wildness. I love the offense strategy. I realize I made an accidental eco system by placing wood pallets upright around a little tree that was struggling with sun scald and wind abuse. I look out my window and watched my wild little birds hiding in it from the hawks. growing onward with a smile.

I hung up a bird feeder & fresh water supply in my back yard, 100's of wild birds soon inundated my yard, can you guess what happened to all my garden pests?

I love this info! Makes me feel less pressure to have everything "perfect"🙂

Thank you for making a video I can link to people every time I see someone on a forum somewhere that says, "I just started my garden and I have all these ____ attacking my plants!" This coincides with the lecture that Dr. Dykstra gave with John Kempf, which is one of the most enlightening things I've learned. I stop looking at "how do I kill these bugs" and start looking at, "how can I improve this soil" and "What should I replace this plant with?"

It's working for me! Anyone that asks me what I do, I refer to your resources, books, videos. You are really on to something with this gardening formula and I, for one, thank you much. This has been my best garden yet, in 60 years of gardening. I'm currently doing fall cleanup and top dressing. Winter for Wisconsin is right around the corner now.

We have such a lack of pollinators that perhaps we ought not be spraying anything.

Great video David! You put together the lessons it took me years and tons of wasted money to figure out into a short sweet video. I hope more people see this video and take the lessons to heart. It will save them all the time and money wasted trying to reproduce a commercial farm in a garden setting. Big farms equal big inputs! Blessings to all of you!

Ok y'all I know the wasps eat our caterpillars but the red wasps down here in south Louisiana are just plain mean. 😂 They gots to go. Tired of em chasing me around the garden. My new best friend the electric fly racket. Watch those suckers get smashed while practicing by back swing and that sound when you get one solid just pumps you up. Wishing y'all a blessed day.

You are such a breath of fresh air, and i couldn’t possibly agree with you more. So dang sensible and so validating of my natural methodology. Thanks for putting your knowledge out there dude. I dig it.

I had 2 clusters of Okra with a Chaya plant between them. Deer only ate one cluster. I have pepper between my citrus hedge seedlings since that space is open for a couple of years. Hornworm only ate one pepper plant. In the past they went from nightshade to nightshade. Intermittent planting worked

yeah you got to watch those wasps when they get in your mailbox though they tend to go through your mail and weed out your personal information 😅 ....I know I usually plan 100 plus tomato plants for the last 20 years or so I only get like four or five medium to small tomatoes off each one but I had four volunteer tomatoes come up in my compost pile and with zero-maintenance I got like 1200 picture-perfect tomatoes off of them even though I pretty much made a compost pile where I normally plant my tomato plants for some reason it didn't seem to help much when I done that 🤷 ... My thumbs are as green as they can be right now I just put a fresh coat of paint on the o'l John Deere

Confusing the pests and making them dizzy gives the hornets and ladybugs time to zero in on their 🎯. Enjoying your videos. Thankyou from zone 6b USA. Blessings. We all need them.

BAAAAMM!!! One of the most significant videos, that either you or anyone has ever done... Comprehend all the lil insights you just tossed out in this video and a peaceful existence of labor, beauty and productivity shall become harmoniously achieved. Wowzers! Awesome! 👆🤠✝😎👍 God, please continue to use David and somehow lead us into being able to use this knowledge in these crazy times of what is to come. Holy Spirit please lead and guide us into and through to Your victory. Amen! HalleluYah!

My best cucumbers by far have accidentally grown in my compost pile for 2 yrs running now.

This needs to be shared throughout all gardening groups. It stuns me to see how many fanatic gardeners still don't know these basics. This is the first lesson you need to learn when you start gardening. This is the foundation of everything we do and try to achieve in a garden. It doesn't matter what kind of garden you have or what climate you are in. This goes for all situations. Well said Dave. I'll be sharing this one around a lot 👍

This was a harsh summer! We did okra, as always. In S.E.Texas this summer the 100°+ no rain weather we had for July and August even killed the okra! This year was a mess. We got a great mater and cucumber harvest before old man drought kicked in, so your point about not mono-cropping aint lost on me bro!

Genius, David. Basic and sensible. As an active backyard gardener, I sometimes get way too hung up on videos with "new" techniques, methods, ingredients that I spend $$ on. There are so many ingredients in my shed, that I cant even remember why I bought them in the first place! I will save this video to watch from time to time. Thank you for sharing your wisdom, hard work, and foibles!

I really enjoy reading everyone’s comments after watching this video! I’m learning so much, and I am 56 years old. I’ve tried so many times in the past to grow food like tomatoes, peppers, and squash, but never had any real success. I thought it was hopeless. This video gives me hope! I bought the Compost Everything book, and 6 months ago buried a big bowl of food scraps in my backyard. When I recently dug it up, it was so beautifully composted! I added that to a raised bed and filled the hole with more kitchen scraps for another round. I’m planning to plant watermelon on top this year! Thanks so much for these videos, David! You are such an inspiration!

I really like the STUN method of plant selection: Sheer, Total, Utter Neglect, invented by Mark Sheperd.

I discovered the wasps were doing me a solid this summer. They were eating the tomato worms. Unfortunately, the horn worm out numbered the wasps and I lost a third of my tomatoes. I'm fighting bad soil conditions, a lack of good supplemental soil and compost, terrible habitat conditions and armadillos. My gardening season has been rough this year. I'm pushing the zone to see if I can get some food to make up for a lost summer. Your fetid swamp water has been a life saver! I highly recommend it to anyone who asks. Thanks for the extra tips!

Don't forget to mention those yellow bug fighting rackets from Harbor Freight 😂

DAvid, another great instructive post. Thank you.

Such a great '5', thank you! The back of 1 raised bed, against a hill, filled up with a so called invasive false rose, but also, jewelweed, yeah, which I had been searching for; the property has lots of poison ivy, but, praise the Lord, lots of jewelweed!! My soil is finally looking better, but it's time to put all to bed for the freeze to come! Thanks, God bless you

You are speaking the truth learned from years of living with nature. I love Dandelions and so does my tortoise. Awesome and useful information for those who have not yet discovered a balanced ecosystem. I never understand why people spray poisons like round-up and have no concern for what they are breathing while they are spraying...poison.

Yes! I went to our farm store and bought a hypodermic syringe, the smallest i could find, and a few needles. I ordered the BT liquid from amazon. Once the plants were up good, once a week i gave each one 1cc of the BT in the stem fairly near the base. I did that for several weeks. It was not easy wrestling with the vines. And often the vine was so dense it seemed impossible, but i persisted and it worked!

That was an excellent presentation. Thank you David the Good

Haven't watched all the way through yet, but I wanted to add something if it didn't come up. I saw this at Limestone Permaculture in Australia. He'd deliberately planted weeds like milk thistle, dandelion etc strategically throughout his vegetable growing areas. Sucking and chewing pests ALWAYS prefer feeding on the growth tips these weeds BEFORE they start attacking your brassicas etc. So on top of confusing the pests & disguising your precious crops, the weeds serve as a decoy & an early warning system of sorts. He would simply nip the tops off of the infested weeds & feed it to his chickens/ducks. That combined with a+ soil health meant I couldn't find a single aphid on his productive plants, even though they co-existed right next to the affected weeds. Sounds counterintuitive, but giving pests a food source they like better than your crops really seems to work.

Breaking it down to basics that win in the end ❤

I’m saving this for the best wasp impersonation in the history of the world. ☺️

Man, so like your style. So many people over complicate stuff. Makes you wonder how plants grew without people there to babysit them. The less pesticides and fertilizers, the better.

This year I had insane wasp nest in a pile of junk destined for the dump. No caterpillars anywhere in the grow beds. Then I killed the nest and took a trip to the dump. Within 3 weeks caterpillars had completely destroyed my seed lettuces. And is the words of Sep Holzer, I had to become the wasp. As it turns out I suck as a wasp, and I lost the lettuce plants.

I know the Beatles chewed up the charts back in the 60's and the Stone's tongue still hangs out of it's mouth to this day With envy

I second your thoughts on planting things that are happy in your climate. I am always looking for plants that will thrive in our zone 7 Central Virginia climate, especially our relatively short, but essentially tropical summers. (Also things that will tolerate our zone 7 winters - mostly those require a bit of protection.) I would add that there are plants that are perfectly happy in spring and fall that do not like the summer at all. Assuming they even survive, they do not thrive, get buggy, have inferior flavor, and take up space for a crop that is, at best, a disappointment. As an example, I do not raise brassicas over the summer - in fact I try to clear them all out fairly early so they don't attract harlequin bugs which would wildly increase in population and be poised to wreak havoc on fall brassica transplants and seedlings. Besides, I eat brassicas fall, winter, and spring - by summer I am really tired of them. Give me okra, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, long bean, &c. For those who want greens in the summer, I suggest malabar spinach, Egyptian spinach (neither of which are spinach) and callaloo (aka amaranth, not the callaloo that is taro leaf.) There are others as well, such as sweet potato greens. I find it entertaining, and useful, to research what is raised by cultures in the tropics, and in climates similar to this one, such as Japan and southeast China, and see what works here. I am, for example, experimenting with various edible gourds. Caterpillars - mainly various cabbage worms. Wasps will indeed do them in - I have actually observed wasps cruising up and down the flowering tops of collards hunting for caterpillars. And, in the spring, purple finches and cardinals and probably other birds hunt through the brassicas for food for their babies. I do occasionally clean up a large infestation of aphids to slow them down long enough for the ladybug population to build up sufficiently to keep them under control. I do use spinosad against squash vine borers, mainly by injecting it into the stems, but also spraying the base of young plants during the vine borer's egg laying season, but mostly I do not have insect pests issues. Good advice, thank-you.

I absolutely love and agree with this! I have been working for years on our backyard ecosystem! We have successfully grown a large population of honeybees, when we started there was virtually no bee population….I feel like we haven’t gotten it quite right because although things are full of life, I believe we have an over abundance of flies….anyone have any thoughts on what may be out of balance and how we might naturally mitigate it???

Plant enough for yourself and the insects.

We tried sowing some late-season corn in our garden this year. It's a bantam sweet corn variety, growing in a 4' x 4' raised bed (cinder block sides). We had several plants that looked doomed about the time others in the row were putting up their tassels, with some sort of insect frass and what looked like rotten centers. We pulled those few stalks and gave them to our chickens, allowing them the opportunity to bug and grub hunt. The remaining stalks do not show any signs of similar damage, so I feel like we were able to get ahead of the pest just enough to let the rest of the plants get stronger. Now, there are tassels with hanging pollen in many stalks and one stalk has tiny ants covering the tassels. On a neighboring stalk with tassels, a seeming large number of predatory bugs are gathering there. We watch daily as the number of ants (and probably aphids, too) are reducing in number, and so far the corn still looks healthy. We are in zone 7b and are trying new (to us) varieties every year, often in several seasons before we rule it a successful or "not for us" variety or crop. If we keep changing up what we grow, the pests are confused and we get fewer of them in general. I enjoy your videos and feel like we are one step closer every season to having a "lazy garden" of low-maintenance food.

Thank you David 🎉 Always teaching us something we need to know. I learned today.. 🥰

❤Well said😊 but I try to keep certain wasps to a minimum, because they eat my Monarch and Swallowtail caterpillars 😢 but I definitely leave the mud dubbers.... loved your video ❤ from here in Rosenberg, Tx....🎉🎉🎉

Love the bit about the mailboxes - who knew they would make such a great gardening accessory! 🤣🤣🤣 Good talk, as always, I appreciate your perspectives. Now, how to apply all this stuff you do on that large tract of land you have to a little 22'x17' urban gardening space... 🤔

I just saw a wasp struggling with a caterpillar twice its size through the window. I ran out to video the carnage but lost it in the leaves. It was so cool!! I like my chaos garden! I'm gonna stop saying companion planting! We just have to go crazy like you do!

I got wasp in my carport that ignore me for the most part. I noticed a hive of bees on one of my pecan trees. All the good and bad insect seem to be functioning properly.

This rings so true. I moved from a climate with very cold snowy winter and then dry arid desert summers to the South where we have 260 days of growing season and even stuff I could grow in the desert would not grow here. That’s been my mission for the last couple years is what CAN I plant that works well here and when is the best time to plant it? I learned about long day and short day onions. I went from the northwestern region to a southern state and boy did I have a horrible first garden season! Lol. I just had to learn what grows best here. 🤷🏻‍♀️Cowpeas, cherry tomatoes and lots and lots of squash and pumpkins as well as how to protect some crops I am still able to grow but with a little more help or shelter from the sun during the middle of the day. Bush beans are almost worthless to me to grow here. Pole beans do better but not in the summer, only in spring and fall. Otherwise it’s heat loving field peas. I finally figured out how to grow snow peas here and had a wonderful crop this spring! I learned so much about timing and I’m still learning about a more permaculture approach as I go because it’s so much less effort down the road and the plants are happier and healthier therefore more productive. I re-learned about the pollinators here and what seems to attract them. Next I’m putting up that lovely deer fencing and rabbit wire around my garden because that’s also an issue. I had great success here with the 3-sisters method and very much enjoyed that this spring/summer as well. The soil gets better and better! It’s all sand, don’t get me wrong, but I’m learning to cover it and feed it. 👍🏻I also have copious amounts of wasps and spiders. 😬I leave them alone and they’ve put up homes in my shed unfortunately but I leave them alone honestly. I do have to watch for leaf cutter ants. They nearly decimated my entire garden before I tracked them and eliminated them. Luckily most of my plants recovered but some like an established jalapeño plant gave up and died. That was extremely frustrating! They worked their way through everything just about but I am glad I found there hole. 4 times. So fun here in the forest. I’m a proud heir to a few pawpaw trees on my property and they are growing wild. I have dewberries in April. There’s a lot I don’t even have to plant or maintain here and that part is glorious! Even the spotted bee balm grows like a weed here. Amazing.

Glory be to God for such wonderful life!

I'm 100% down with this, David. I've been building soil for about 10 years now in our current place. The plants are strong and I can't recall the last time I sprayed, even organics like BT. And, yes, I let the weak ones die out. I'm learning to be a ruthless gardener as well as a smart one!

I love your style! Thanks for the encouragement. I’m new to South Georgia gardening and I’m overwhelmed!

Thanks for the reminders! I wanted to add a discovery of mine for growers dealing with the cabbage moth. I used to cover all the brassicas, which was a nuisance. But since I began saving seeds, I noticed the cabbage moths prefer the broccoli flowers. So I always let an early one go to flower while the rest of the crop is avoided by this pest.

Excellent video. Thank you for the education. I usually go scorched-earth on the pests in my garden but do recognize that strategy creates a never ending battle.

David once again you made a great video- thanks more please. 🙏👍🌻

Great Video!! Thanks 🙂

Thanks for your tips!

Thx David for another great insight video have a great weekend :)

So good

Loved it!

spot on

Thankyou David the GOAT. Very cool

Great video; thanks for sharing!

Very nice distillation of information, David! Thank you.

Dandelions are great plants to have. They're medicinal.

❤😊 you go!!!

Thank you! This teaching is what you do best!

Thanks, I really enjoyed this video, please do more of these.

I want so bad to have chaos in my garden but it’s so hard for me to allow it to happen, lol. I have 3 grocery rows and love them but the weeds are so much harder to control. I’m almost to the point of just starting to plant in islands like you showed on some other videos, once they get going I’m sure I’ll love it. I do like to till between crops and add compost and incorporate it. That’s nearly impossible when you have lots of perennials in the beds.

Wow that makes so much sense. Finally. Something that works. Changing your perspective. Thank you ❤ so much.

This is a good one!

I got a copy of your book. Very much looking forward to reading. I am just west off Jacksonville.

Night vision goggles and a salt gun works well with slugs and snails

Great tips. Very helpful 🍅🌱

That thumbnail game on point. 😂 And damn. Limited fertility this year. I'm gonna have a lot of squash this year, but I'd love to have a 160+ pound plant.

Words of wisdom 🥰

fantastic.. thank u

Nice garden revival sermon. Good stuff!

Tree frogs also like plants with large tropical looking leaves. Plant some cannas, elephant ears, etc.

You're a good guy man! Thanks for the inspiration!

Great post.

I so need to hear the message that this video provided. Bless you, David.

Best video. Thank you for the huge encouragement😊

Thanks!

❤❤❤ Thanks for sharing.

One of your best videos😊

thanks buddy 😊

I don't have a garden, but this makes sense. 😃👍🏻

Thank you

Your the real deal no bullshoot

ALL great advise. Thanks David the Good

Great video @David the Good

I love volunteers! The plants that just sprout out of nowhere, never forget helping my neighbor rid his soy beans of volunteer corn because it dropped the price at harvest, if something grows by it's self, keep it, this year was a random Everglades tomato, simply would not quit growing, thanks for the reminder David!

The wasps are the best helpers! They eat all the bad bugs and are constantly on patrol under the leaves.

I LOVED Jack Broccoli! And as soon as I finished I was wishing for a sequel!

I love your videos, thankyou from Australia 😊

I stopped mass plantings in my raised beds. I don’t plan anything anymore. I just walk and plant works. I have random onion and garlic throughout my raised beds. I carry a pocket full of seeds and when I harvest and see a new opening, I randomly select what goes there. I use carrots in every bed because they are a great ground cover. So good I can start new carrots in august. So my beds are all random. The bugs are definitely confused. And I get surprised at every raised bed because they all are chaotically planted. Feeding the soil is the absolute best thing I’ve done. Peaches in SC is a fail. 1/5 of my trees are peaches so it’s sad that I’m removing them all. They will be replaced with persimmons that are begging to live here I love your videos brother