Keeping your Garden Healthy

One of the most challenging—and sometimes
frustrating — aspects of being a gardener is all
the natural forces you have to combat. Even in the
unlikely event that you have perfect soil and a
marvelous climate, you're still not home and dry;
all sorts of pests are In competition with you for your
crop. The pest problems you're likely to encounter
in your vegetable garden fall Into two categories:
insects and the like, of which there are a remarkable
variety; and animals, usually the four-legged kind but
occasionally two-legged intruders as well.
Most gardeners have to contend with insect
problems at some time during the growing season,
but the problems are not always obvious. It can
come as quite a surprise, just when it looks as though
all your hard work is paying off and your plants are
progressing healthily towards a fine harvest, to find
that the pests are at work. You may notice one
morning that a couple of healthy young plants have
keeled over and died — a pretty sure indication that
you've got cutworms working away beneath the soil
level. Or you may see tiny holes in the leaves of your
eggplant, signaling the activity of the flea beetle.
Your plants are subject to diseases, too, and you
know you're in trouble when the leaves turn'yellow, or
the plants seem stunted and weak, or mildew starts
to show up on leaves and stems. Plant diseases spread
rapidly and must be curbed as soon as they appear,
but this isn't always easy. There are certain measures
you can take to forestall disease problems — like
planting varieties that have been bred to be diseaseresistant,
and rotating some crops when it's
possible to do so. Beyond that, once a disease attacks
a plant, about all you can do is remove the infected
plant — among horticulturalists this process is called
"culling" — to stop the disease from spreading to
neighboring healthy plants. On the whole, pest
problems are easier to control than problems
caused by plant diseases.