An indispensable tool in the garden is not only against slugs and wireworm

For our garden has become an indispensable mustard green manure, and a tool in the fight against pests. Even a pity that once we do not think about until it prompted one absorbed in gardening Summer Resident. It all began with our complaints of wireworms and loss of crops of potatoes and carrots. Mustard best to cope with the struggle with many pests and at the same time suppressing weeds and improve soil structure. First things first.

white mustard we sow early spring in April, so she had time to grow up a bit (for 4-7 weeks), wherever after going to plant potatoes, tomatoes. For a week and a half before planting tomatoes, potatoes need to mow and dig mustard. You can sow and leave it to bloom around fruit trees and bushes. This is, firstly, deter moths and aphids, and secondly mustard flowers - honey plants will attract into your territory pollinating insects.

If you do not have time to mow and sow green manure, it is possible to sow the mustard between the potato rows. You know, the last 2 years this practice has shown that wireworms in the garden was much smaller and without the use of chemicals. And the practice of planting in autumn (tell you more later) helps to overcome the pathogen Phytophthora.

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ON A NOTE: Young leaves white mustard, by the way, are delicious in a salad. In the spring and in the fall I collect them and for a while kept in the refrigerator as an ordinary greens. You can optionally add instead of the usual lettuce and even with them. The taste is bitter and not very flavorful. Try it!

mustard powder you can start rolling in between rows of cabbage, strawberries, etc., so that slugs are not crawled. Do not forget to update after the rains, when the ground has dried up. And if you make slugs to treat, it can be watered with a tincture of mustard.

10 liter bucket pour some water on 100g. nastivaem powder and up to 2 days. Then you need to filter and diluted 1: 1 with clean water and water the plants, which are not only slugs attacked, but also butterflies, mites, midges. Neighbors said that this infusion is also added to the soap solution, the foam liquid longer detained on slips.

Some advise a tincture and by aphids, but I have tried, they have not diminished. Therefore, I suggest another effective and ecological method for controlling aphids, described in the article Aphids and moths: the struggle to attract ladybugs.

After harvesting potatoes in the autumn every year we plant the white mustard as a green manure. And preferably before flowering in mid-October or even the end of the mow and plow the soil. This will provide a double benefit from the green manure and fertilizers, and to expose the pests and their larvae to frost. White mustard loosens, enriches the soil with phosphorus and nitrogen, and to some extent it disinfects.

And yes, autumn - a time when you can once again enjoy the fragrant leaves of mustard salad.