[HN Gopher] Let insects eat your plants
___________________________________________________________________
Let insects eat your plants
Author : andsoitis
Score : 52 points
Date : 2024-05-05 15:10 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| vlaaad wrote:
| I have a small garden on a balcony. I do it for a piece of mind.
| I help it grow and thrive, the beauty of the plants gives me
| peace of mind. There is no place for freaking saw flies in this
| equation, so no thanks, I'll continue getting rid of the
| caterpillars.
| carabiner wrote:
| Did an insect write this?
| bl4ckneon wrote:
| I believe it was a bunch of them in a trenchcoat!
| ourmandave wrote:
| Early media roll out for the coming cicada-pocalypse.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| Not serving water in restaurants fixed the water crisis and
| letting insects eat my roses will fix the bug crisis.
|
| As long as the farmers receiving billions of dollars a year in
| holdover depression-era welfare programs don't have do anything
| to combat the problem, we should be fine.
| para_parolu wrote:
| Never heard about water crisis because of water in restaurants.
| Can you elaborate a bit? What place and time that happened?
| 2024throwaway wrote:
| I believe you need to mentally append a /s to the GP's
| comment.
| kcplate wrote:
| I still find it wild the number of folks on HN who seem
| blind to obvious sarcasm. Perhaps if english is a second
| language you get a pass, but if english is your first
| language...oof.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| It is hard to parse sarcasm in a world where opinions are
| much broader and varied than they used to be and
| signalling has become more pronounced and infused into
| life.
|
| You genuinely do get bloggers recommending ensuring you
| take a reusable bottle on a plane trip, that people take
| shorter showers, and don't leave the water running when
| brushing their teeth.
|
| It is reasonable to do all those things, but they are
| pretty small.
|
| Are these 3 sarcasm or real?
|
| - Wash your dishes in a bowl instead of a larger sink.
|
| - Fill your watering can waiting for the water to heat up
|
| - Put buckets in your shower.
|
| Answer. All real.
|
| One is a Google suggested tip for saving water.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+save+water+at+home
| &oq...
| specialist wrote:
| Those tips on their own are fine.
|
| It is absurd and counterproductive to then suggest those
| measures will meaningful impact a regional multi-year
| drought, while farmers continue to grow alfalfa and
| almonds.
| specialist wrote:
| Recent zoom mtg: Tim tells a knock-knock joke. Dan
| doesn't get it. Multiple people then try to explain joke
| to Dan. Very painful. I still can't decide if Dan was
| trolling the group. Because no one can be _that_ dense,
| right?
| marnett wrote:
| The site guidelines for this forum advise against humor,
| and sarcasm is arguably a subset of humor.
|
| The site guidelines also advise to read things in the
| best interpretable way.
|
| So ultimately what you observe is a large number of folks
| on HN follow the site guidelines - which is wild, but in
| a good way.
|
| This thread is a nice example of why those guidelines are
| in place, as humor and sarcasm stifle conversation, as
| contributors feel they don't need to make meaningful
| contributions to threads as long as it's a joke.
| kcplate wrote:
| > humor and sarcasm stifle conversation
|
| ...or punctuate conversation vis-a-vis reductio ad
| absurdum
| sircastor wrote:
| Sarcasm is by definition a statement that has a differing
| meaning than it would otherwise hold. Sarcasm is
| accomplished by vocal intonation, and at a stretch, by
| context. Any sentence read lacks the information to
| identify it as sarcasm unless it's explicitly stated.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > Sarcasm is by definition
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sarcasm
|
| > accomplished by vocal intonation, and at a stretch, by
| context
|
| You must be using a different dictionary from the rest of
| us.
|
| > Any sentence read lacks the information to identify it
| as sarcasm unless it's explicitly stated.
|
| There's a skill called "reading comprehension" that can
| really help with this.
| jogjayr wrote:
| California in the mid-2010s.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| I find this kind of comment neither particularly amusing nor
| informative. Can you elaborate on those kinds of programs and
| their problems instead?
| whythre wrote:
| The above post isn't about specific details, it's about the
| idea of individuals being scolded into trying useless
| 'solutions' to problems caused by the mismanagement of entire
| industries. Industrialized farming involves a _lot_ of
| pesticides. Acting as if the problem will get better if
| people just let pests eat their small garden plots is dumb.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The problem will get better, even if the direct effect of
| no pesticide home gardens of course is negligible.
|
| But it helps change the mindset of people. People who live
| in garden with a diversity of wildlife, who find joy in the
| butterflies (and their larvae), who are appalled by the
| thought of poison their own air, water and soil, soon start
| to buy organic food and vote for stricter environment
| protection laws.
|
| In addition, while it might not change the world, the
| amount of pesticides and herbicides used by all the
| homeowners in a city like LA isn't insignificant, in
| particular not for the local wildlife.
| antisthenes wrote:
| I find this tongue-in-cheek commentary very amusing,
| especially considering the article is a perfect example of
| describing feel-good bikeshedding, rather than addressing
| actual issues that were called out (e.g. large scale farming
| and loss of habitat due to human development)
|
| If you want to read more, you can start at a very high level
| by Googling habitat loss and industrial agriculture, I guess?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Instead of "habitat loss" I prefer to call it "starvation
| prevention".
| elmomle wrote:
| I think "starvation deferment" is a more accurate phrase.
| To prevent starvation we need to address the tendency of
| humanity to reproduce, and to consume resources, past the
| limits of what we can safely and reliably sustain. Taking
| more and more land, and increasingly suppressing nature,
| to create more food on a finite Earth simply kicks the
| problem down the road.
| plasmasheep wrote:
| Good news, the share of the world's land used for
| agriculture has been declining for 24 years.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-land-area-
| used-f...
|
| Now that your objection (increased land use) has been
| disproven, I am sure you will come to change your
| outmoded, even Ehrlichian, views on human population
| size.
| jogjayr wrote:
| I don't know how to reconcile that with this other chart
| which shows agricultural land went from 4.81 billion ha
| in 2000 to 4.83 billion ha in 2023.
|
| Per capita it's still a decline. Personally I would
| attribute it to increasing yields in the developing world
| which are due to modern practices, pesticides, and
| fertilizers. But it doesn't show a decline like in the
| chart you posted.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-agricultural-
| area-o...
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| _eye roll_ when are we gonna get over this Malthusian
| doomsaying.
|
| Population is not the issue. Stewardship is the issue.
| nemo44x wrote:
| The fact we've basically eliminated fatality rates to
| kids under 5 is the the actual thing they're trying to
| say. That kids survive at a rate in many places globally
| that is not sustainable to those places. Meanwhile we are
| told that we should limit how many kids, if any, we
| should have.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The good news is that childbirth rates are plummeting in
| the majority of the world, despite desperate efforts to
| encourage them upwards.
|
| It turns out that, given education, opportunity, and
| choice, women want an average of far under 2 children.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Uhh no. Women are more likely having less children
| because economies are increasingly integrating them into
| the workforce and there isnt time or money for it.
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Might as well go all the way and call it a "green
| initiative"
| phyzome wrote:
| If you want birds, grow plants that support caterpillars.
|
| It takes thousands of caterpillars to raise a nest of baby birds
| to fledglings. (This is true even for seed-eating birds.) Those
| caterpillars don't come from thin air.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It takes 3-5 "outdoor" cats to slaughter those birds in a few
| weeks.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Amazing how little attention this gets, people just shrug it
| off. If it were something man-made having the same impact as
| cats on bird populations there would be protests demanding
| that it be banned.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| One could argue that feral domesticated cats are a man-made
| issue.
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| Oh yeah totally. I meant if it was something like
| chemical that only impacted birds or was caused by
| driving SUVs or anything like that.
| euroderf wrote:
| We find that mice and moles are killed in much greater
| quantity than birds are.
| mythrwy wrote:
| A reflective collar with a bell on the cat helps reduce (not
| completely eliminate but substantially reduce) bird (and
| lizard) deaths while still allowing the cat to catch mice and
| gophers pretty well in my experience.
| DataDive wrote:
| I do think that it is an interesting thought - even if I don't
| necessarily agree.
|
| If you go to any home improvement store, you'll see walls of
| insect-killing products; most appear highly toxic. Many people
| also exhibit overly fearful reactions to insects (or snakes, for
| that matter).
|
| The tradeoff is not between having or not having
| roses/tomatoes/beans, but should you go out of your way to take
| out all insects with the most toxic means possible?
|
| I read the article as more of a wake-up call and a bit of
| education, suggesting that maybe there is beauty and value in
| life in general, beyond us humans deciding what is valuable and
| what is not.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| The snake fear may be a deeply-rooted instinctual fear common
| to all primates! (Along with fear of falling...)
| jwells89 wrote:
| I don't think people as a whole are as fearful of insects as
| they are avoidant of getting bitten/stung or having their
| living space and especially foodstuffs infested. It's my belief
| that most benign insects just get caught in the crossfire.
| ainiriand wrote:
| I see the problem in the same way as you. I have a small garden
| adjacent to my neighbours. This winter was quit humid and a lot
| of moss grew all over our gardens, he decided to use chemical
| products to get rid of it and any weeds for the spring. Now
| spring came and there are way less insects in my garden as
| opposed to last year, not counting the week of putrid fumes
| coming from his garden.
| beretguy wrote:
| What if I only grow bug eating plants?
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| I did this with my indoor pots, had a couple of rolly pollies,
| was like oh cool I'll give them this rock and stick to chill on.
|
| Fast forward 2 years - The Interpot Federation of Rolly Pollies
| have sent me a declaration of war. They have a standing army of 4
| million rollies and a mercenary crew of centipedes.
|
| Their demands are as follows:
|
| - Keep the strawberry tops flowing
|
| - More water but not TOO much water
|
| - The kids want a pump track to roll around on
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Did they colonize your desert regions? They always colonize the
| desert regions.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| You lack predators to keep the population of the Interpot
| Federation of Rolly Pollies in check. As their God I suggest
| you encourage a religion that requires rolly polly sacrifice to
| please you. If they don't adopt there is always alien abduction
| or the threat of drought to urge compliance.
|
| You have to decrease their numbers before they start getting
| uppity thinking they can conquer the kingdom of god.
| jnellis wrote:
| Who is that predator? I wish to hire them desperately. We had
| an agreement that the federation would stick to just the dead
| material but there are obviously some free thinking factions
| at work. Now I'm growing lettuce as just the distraction crop
| for them (and the slugs) to protect the other youngling
| starts and strawberries.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Chickens love rolly pollies.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| Dysdera Crocata is a spider literally evolved around
| killing and eating roly-poly. As they need to pierce the
| roly-poly's exoskeleton, their bite is painful (but
| harmless) for humans.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodlouse_spider
| jnellis wrote:
| I've seen this guy by the shed, thanks. I'll ask him if
| he's busy this summer.
| endofreach wrote:
| Last summer, I sat down on our terrace in the dark. We had a
| temporary old wooden table. In the corner of my eye, I saw
| something small scurry across the table. When I turned on my
| flashlight, I saw around 2-3 dozen rolly pollies standing
| around an almost completely burnt out candle in a semi-circle
| like at a concert or so. It looked like a ritual or as if
| they were worshipping something.
|
| Unfortunately, I quickly got disgusted (because I'm a wimp
| when it comes to insects) and retreated back into the house.
| But I haven't been able to get this image out of my head for
| a year. And since you commented about the god of rolly
| pollies, I finally had the chance to share it. I wish i had
| taken a photo of it.
|
| P.S: while googling to check if rolly polly is the correct
| translation to my native tongue, i found out that they're not
| even insects but crustaceans.
| adolph wrote:
| Mist with olive oil and have them roll around in cocoa powder.
| Deelish, Like an inside out M&M!
| gtirloni wrote:
| Maybe gigantic monocultures have something to do with the insect
| decline?
|
| I love watching the ocasional Surinamese cockroach in my garden.
| Even issued warnings to anyone thinking about killing them. But
| it's such a small scale that I don't believe I'm contributing
| anything useful.
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Butterfly effect perhaps
| ortusdux wrote:
| As I understand it, one of the best things you can do is not bag
| up your leaves in the fall. Many insects lay their eggs on
| leaves, with the goal of having them winter over and hatch in the
| spring. There is an industry around blowing, raking, vacuuming,
| and bagging leaves, which stops this cycle.
|
| I spread most of my leaves out along the back of my lot, and the
| rest go on the garden beds.
|
| It is also an easy sell to people who don't really care about
| insects. Mosquitoes don't reproduce this way, but the insects
| that eat them do. You also don't need to dispose of your leaves
| every year. You can use the leaves as ground cover, and run them
| through a leaf shredder to make mulch, which saves you from
| buying these every year.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/01/insect-re...
|
| https://www.ecolandscaping.org/07/installing-and-maintaining...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/04/realestate/garden-mulch.h...
| euroderf wrote:
| Rake the leaves into piles and hit'em with the lawnmower and
| collect'em in the lawnmower's leaf bag and then spread the
| shred. Some in the garden to rot thru the winter, the rest back
| around the lawn.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I do a no pesticide garden and insects are a part of it. It took
| me 4-5 years of not giving up to reach a state of equilibrium.
| The first two years, the losses were devastating. Plants were
| regularly eaten by unwanted insects like aphids and cabbage white
| caterpillars. And I had to keep adding more plants. Now I have
| 70+ plant species in my small backyard and the beneficial insect
| moved in. Spiders, ladybugs and wasps now take care of any
| infestation before it becomes big. And the ones that stay small
| are now just an acceptable part of the garden's lifecycle.
| septic-liqueur wrote:
| Sounds great, would love to hear more about your method. What
| about weed btw ?
| RetroTechie wrote:
| _" A well-balanced garden shouldn't be munched down to the ground
| and left a wasteland - that should never happen in a biodiverse
| system, says Jones."_
|
| This. Care for the soil. And grow a diversity of plants. Then
| those plants -on average- will grow well, and strong enough to
| ward off pests.
|
| Some plants will do poor in a season, other plants will do better
| than usual. Have faith in your garden's ecosystem to regulate
| itself. So that you 'need' to interfere (read: work, remove
| weeds, and occasionally water) as little as possible.
| unstyledcontent wrote:
| If you plant something and nothing is eating it, it is not part
| of the ecosystemand might as wellbe made of platic. I plant
| native flowers and it is so gratifying seeing the abundance of
| life thriving on even the smallest plant. I also plant edible
| foods because I need to eat as well!
| engine_y wrote:
| I was bought my vegetables from a guy who used absolutly no
| insecticides or pesticides. It was really great. He had a pretty
| decent area of land where he grew a plethora of crops. He told me
| that sometimes some of the plants were eaten but he had others so
| it's fine. The vegetables were very tasty and fresh and we loved
| it. We were glad to pay a bit more for fresh and poison free
| stuff.
|
| Unfortunately, after a year or so he went out of business because
| he let the insects eat his plants.
| deadbabe wrote:
| They ate his lunch :(
| hinkley wrote:
| A year or so is probably not enough to build up the predator
| population.
|
| Intensive agriculture, especially as currently practiced, is
| all about local optima. If he'd ramped up slower and worked on
| predator habitat it might have gone better for him.
|
| I have wasps and beetles doing a lot of policing on my
| property. It's fungi and weed species I struggle with, not
| insects.
| mrweiner wrote:
| How are fungi causing you trouble? I associate fungi as being
| positive for plant growth.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| As a gardener, fungal diseases probably cost the most each
| year in plant loss. They are very difficult to eradicate
| once established and fungal spores are microscopic and very
| good at spreading. I've had years of 100% loss on tomato's,
| peppers, and apple trees, all from tiny fungi.
| xolox wrote:
| I grow mushrooms as a hobby and in that context my number
| one enemy is trichoderma, the green mold. This is because
| trichoderma is parasitic on other fungi, i.e. it doesn't
| colonize the substrates that I grow my fungi on, it
| directly colonizes (eats) the fungal threads (mycelium)
| thereby killing it off before it has a chance to "fruit"
| (produce mushrooms).
|
| This is how I initially learned that trichoderma is used
| as a natural "fungicide". In your specific case it might
| be interesting to investigate this in more detail, e.g.
| you can "inoculate" your soil with copious amounts of
| trichoderma to fight off other fungi.
|
| For more details here's a pointer to a rabbit hole:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=trichoderma+fungicide
|
| Sorry if you know all of this already, I was hoping it
| might help :-).
| mrweiner wrote:
| Ah right, I was just thinking of aiming to have fungal-
| dominant soil. I wasn't even thinking of fungal disease
| above ground. Makes sense.
| bregma wrote:
| One single fungus caused Ireland to lose half its
| population in 1848 and caused revolutions to spread all
| across Europe that same year.
|
| Now multiply that by the thousands of different fungi found
| in a typical garden.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Actually, the cause of the potato blight, _P. infestans_
| , wasn't a fungus at all, but actually a stramenopile, a
| group of microorganisms less related to us than fungi
| are. It was thought to be a fungus at the time because it
| forms strands that look like mold hyphae, but that's just
| convergent evolution.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytophthora_infestans
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stramenopile
| oooyay wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycelium
|
| Mycelium _is_ very important to agriculture. Every plant
| has different threats, but I 'll use apple trees because I
| have those. Phytophthora rot is referred to as a fungus but
| actually is not. Apple scab can be mitigated with a
| biological control (read: natural predator) and apple rust
| is solved by proper spacing away from conifers (don't plant
| an apple orchard within 4-5 miles of a juniper forest) or
| simply removing galls from affected cedars. Unlike
| Phytophthora, both of those are a _certain_ kind of fungus
| which has a different relationship with its host than
| mycelium does.
|
| Somewhat non-sequitur, we also grow mushrooms. Throwing
| spent mushroom cakes into my worm bin is an actual super
| power in composting. It breaks large things down that the
| worms won't go after so that they're small enough that the
| worms _do_ go after them.
| mrweiner wrote:
| Ah right, I was thinking of fungal-dominant soil and
| compost, but wasn't thinking of fungal disease above
| ground.
|
| Growing mushrooms is one of those things that's been on
| my list forever, but I never get around to setting
| anything up. What system do you use for your mushrooms?
| hinkley wrote:
| There are at least five roles fungi play. Some are
| positive, some are neutral, some are parasitic, some switch
| teams.
|
| Which is part of the problem. Fungicides usually do more
| harm than good.
| Devasta wrote:
| Everyone should get rid of their lawns in favour of native plants
| and flowers. So much time and effort put into maintaining
| absolutely useless, sterile wastelands, it's lunacy.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I didn't know anyone was fighting against insects on perennial
| plants. I've certainly never bothered, I've never seen insects do
| enough damage to be bothered. However, I'm not going to leave
| cabbage moths to destroy my brassicas, because they absolutely
| will not stop until the plant is a nub in the soil.
| bregma wrote:
| I have current bushes. Every year, one day in June, the
| cutworms emerge and strip all the bushes of the foliage in
| about 8 hours leaving nothing but bunches of red berries
| dangling from naked sticks. It doesn't kill the plants, but
| neither do they thrive.
|
| Still, it's the tent caterpillars that are the worst. They'll
| strip all trees and bushes in a 20 metre radius and some years
| there's a nest every 10 metres. Not good in an orchard.
| sitkack wrote:
| When I was kid, you could lift up a board in the backyard and
| find hundreds of bugs. Now my urban back yard still has bugs, but
| easily 1/10th or even 1/100th of what we had when I was a kid. I
| use zero chemicals, but who knows what the previous owner did.
|
| I'd really like to encourage a healthy bug population back there,
| any tips?
| daveguy wrote:
| Let weeds grow in your yard. Cut it high -- ~3+ inches. It'll
| still be green if you're in a temperate climate (probably
| greener than your neighbors). Birds and bugs both love a more
| natural lawn.
| fmajid wrote:
| Keep in mind your neighbors might not appreciate your insect-ful
| garden if it rubs off on theirs.
| hypefi wrote:
| I have spent one year growing vegetables in my garden and
| observing the slow growth of the plants, and it was one of the
| most amazing and humbling experiences I've ever experienced, the
| dance of the insects around the plants, the ants the pollinators,
| the bees, the spiders who trapped and ate the insects, the
| insects of the soil all worked in a quite fashioned harmony, it
| seemed impossible that the plants could grow without the insects,
| as though the plants are the buildings of a city and the insects
| its inhabitants.
| genericacct wrote:
| ok but no snails
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-05 23:02 UTC)