Cultivating & Appreciating the Backyard Ecosystem

I love visiting my business clients on rainy days. It's inspiring to see the effects of the hydration on the plants and to watch the rain drops shine on the leaves.

Like any growing space, each client I visited yesterday has it's own list of to-do's. No doubt, oftentimes there is an overlap of tasks to be done at each space. But wherever we are growing plants, we are cultivating an ecosystem that is unique to that particular location.

Later in the day, I hosted a resident event for one of my business clients (4 of the 5 of them are apartment communities). This client has a hydroponics system in a shared community space. I gave the attendees a quick run-down of the system and a short tutorial of growing food at home before planting a bunch of goodies in small grow bags for everyone to take home.

If you've been in class with me before then you'll know that I LOVE questions. Seriously, love them. I always smile when someone sheepishly raises their hand and says, "I have a really silly question."

Y'all there is no such thing.

We ask when we don't know, and then we learn!

We were going through their questions yesterday and without fail, the topic of bugs and pests came up. Some of the attendees said they had thrown out plants before that had pests, and were very adverse to bugs. This is fair! When I first started working with plants, I didn't like seeing bugs either. Any kind of bugs.

But now, to my own surprise, I love seeing them! Any of them. If we have worked together, you'll know how excited I am when I see an earth worm, or bee, or even a wasp fly by. When we grow food at home, we are cultivating an ecosystem.

Within this ecosystem are the following members,

• Plants (duh)

• Animals (like us, but also... critters, insects, spiders, etc.)

• Fungi (delicious, and found in the soil)

• Bacteria (also soilborne)

• Minerals

• Water

• Air/Wind

• Sunlight

• And more!

Our goal, in tending to our growing spaces, is to work to our best abilities to keep all members or components of our backyard ecosystems in balance. We're a bit selfish in that, aren't we?! We want all these components to work to OUR best advantage. I guess that's a luxury we get to experience, and enforce, being the sentient top of the food chain.

It is all about balance. While I love seeing a bee or a butterfly or a hoverfly or a lacewing or a ladybug... I do not love seeing an aphid or a hornworm or a cabbage worm or an army worm or squash bug or a leaf-footed bug.

Many of our pest management tools and resources are "broad spectrum" meaning they affect ALL insects not just the bad ones. I think of lacewings and ladybugs as my friends, because they help me! They help by eating the "bad" bugs (who are honestly just trying to thrive like the rest of us). Bees and hoverflies are my friends too, they help pollinate and without them I would have no tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, or any fruit.

I don't want to lose a whole crop of sweet peas to aphids. Or have an infestation of tomato hornworms. I do not consider these bugs as friends, though all living things are deserving of respect.

How do I strike balance in my backyard ecosystem?

• I try use only organic materials, from soil to seeds to seedlings to sprays, products and plant food.

• I give my plants plenty of space to increase airflow and access to sunlight.

• I practice companion planting to encourage the good bugs, ideally the carnivorous bugs.

• I defer to manually removing bugs when I see them. And usually feed them to my chickens, who are also a member of my backyard ecosystem.

• I resort to using neem oil (an organic insecticide) minimally throughout the growing months, and always with a keen awareness of it's impact on my "friends."

How do you find balance in your backyard ecosystem to ensure all components are working in harmony? Honor the ecosystem, and try to work with it as opposed to against it. Smile at the bugs, there are more good ones than bad ones around you!