Pest Control

We are pretty concerned about pests (insects, mildew, etc) since we can't use pesticides to control them. There is an advantage to being in Alaska, because there are a number of insects that don't live up here. Unfortunately there are some that thrive (eg powdery mildew), so we will have to be careful.

We have 2 methods of control for insects. First is humidity. Most insects do not thrive in low humidity. We aren't sure how low we can keep it, but if it is below about 80% it will start controling them by reducing viability of eggs, etc. The second method is much more tedious; trapping and otherwise catching them. If you have any other suggestions (besides pesticides) we would very much appreciate them. We have carefully inspected our plants and do not see any sign of infection on them. But we will take your comments to heart and consider keeping them separate from the greenhouse. Though some things will have to end up in it (eg strawberries & grapes), they have been around for a year with no sign of disease.

We are expecting serious aphid problems. They are infecting all the trees near the greenhouse, and I suspect it will prove impossible to keep them out. We will combat them on 3 levels:

• Keep the plants healthy with plenty of (potassium or phosphorous--I can't remember which) that promotes strong cell walls and helps prevent aphids from drilling them
• the humidity mentioned earlier
• physically destroying them.

Any other suggestions? We might be able to use a soap spray, but will only do this as a last resort. We are hoping that they will not like what we have in the greenhouse (ie they live off tree leaves now), but we are not very hopeful!

We have decided against sterilizing our soil. There are 3 reasons:

• We would be damaging beneficial as well as bad pests
• there really aren't a lot of serious pests up here, and we hope that we will not have a pest problem by using the techniques outlined above
• the physical quantity rather defeats us--there is going to be 300,000 pounds of dirt, and it would probably take us more than a month to sterilize it. So we are going to use it straight from the garden, and hope for the best. I should point out that we have no pest problems in the garden, so we don't feel we are too far out in left field!

This may be a more extensive answer than you were looking for, but I am going to add this to our web page and wanted it to be complete!

Comments and suggestions would be very welcome.