Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

One thing that is very important to know is that if your crops are not
getting enough nutrition they become palatable to insects and hosts to
disease. I use leaf brix levels to determine the health of my plants and
will supplement feed when brix falls too low. It is a rather complex method
of farming, but for me the pay-off is the reduction in pesticide/fungicide
applications. I love the technical side though so it suits me fine. The
reason why insects eat low brix plants is related to the complexing of
sugars in the leaf.

Incomplete nutrition will cause high levels of simple sugars to be produced
which are perfect insect food. Complete nutrition on the other hand will
result in complex carbohydrates making up the leaf which quite simply,
insects cannot digest and therefore will not eat. When you walk through the
grass bordering my garden there are literally clouds of diamond back moth
that love Chinese cabbage in particular. However through good nutrition they
only attack a couple (averaging 8-9% loss at the moment) which I am
satisfied with considering the savings if I was to use bt or EW80 to control
them.

Using the mittleider system you should always have complete nutrition, just
be aware of your watering etc as this has a role to play in ensuring that
the nutrition is getting into the leaves and helping the plant to fight
pests and disease on its own.

cheers,

Edwin.
Samoa, South Pacific.

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