| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
Efficient Intercropping for Biological Control of Insects
Videos For An Earth In Transition – http://www.earth-heal.com/index.php/videos.html 
Source: Dr Eric Brennan USDA-ARS
You can grow your greens without pesticide, and do it beautifully, simply by planting the right variety of flowers as companions to your lettuces.
Companion planting is nothing new to organic farmers and gardeners. It was a mainstay of crop sustainability for millennia before Big Ag ever devastated the landscape with genetically modified organisms meant to withstand copious spraying of herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides.
HOW DO ORGANIC FARMERS CONTROL APHIDS & PRODUCE HIGH QUALITY LETTUCE WITHOUT PESTICIDES?
-With naturally occurring beneficial insects like hoverflies that eat aphids live! Farmers attract these good bugs into the field by intercropping lettuce with flowers like alyssum.
This interactive science video:
-shows how this amazing aphid control system works
-a more EFFICIENT and NOVEL way to achieve biological control of aphids with LESS LAND AREA and fewer weed problems.
-is based on RESEARCH by Dr. ERIC BRENNAN at the USDA Agricultural Research Service during 9 years of commercial-scale organic romaine lettuce production in Salinas Valley, California.
-includes TECHNICAL DETAILS and some HUMOR.
-was first presented at the American Society of Horticulture Science annual conference in July 2013.
Source: http://www.earth-heal.com/videos/viewvideo/5058/efficient-intercropping-for-biological-control-of-insects.html
