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Integrated Pest Management (IPM) With Jordan Alexander
52 Plays11 hours ago
In this episode of The Gardener’s Lodge Podcast, I’m joined by Jordan from The Shed Organics to explore the world of integrated pest management, and why everything you think you know about pests might be wrong. We dive into building resilient, healthy plants, working with nature instead of against it, and why a few aphids in your garden might actually be a good thing. From soil health to natural pest control strategies, this conversation is packed with practical insights to help you grow a thriving, balanced garden without relying on chemicals.
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Transcript
Introduction to Gardener's Lodge Podcast
00:00:07
Speaker
Step into the gardener's lodge with me, Michael Haw. Let's explore the fascinating worlds of gardening, nature and ecology through conversations with experts, thought leaders, passionate enthusiasts, and of course, some real good friends.
00:00:23
Speaker
All from the cozy heart of the lodge. Come on in. Hello and welcome to the
Listener Questions: Lavender Issues
00:00:30
Speaker
Gardener's Lodge podcast. My name is Michael and today we are going to start with an Ask Michael question, which has been submitted by Jennifer, who lives in London, submitted via my website. And you can ask me a question also at thegardener'slodge.co.uk slash podcast. Fill in the form there and I will endeavour to answer your question ASAP.
00:00:52
Speaker
But Jennifer says, hi Michael, I love my lavender. It's a must have in my garden. But as the new flowers grow, there is a white foam forming on the stems.
00:01:06
Speaker
What is this? And how do I get rid of it? Thank you, Jennifer. So thanks Jennifer. ah Yes, I have noticed this on lavender at the moment as well. So the white foam is actually known as cuckoo spit.
00:01:22
Speaker
Nothing to do with the bird though. The white foam actually contains the little nymph of a frog hopper or a bug known as the spittle bug.
00:01:34
Speaker
The foam basically protects them from predators, keeps them from drying out in the heat as it warms up and ah the larvae produce the foam itself. Now, the important thing is just leave it where it is.
00:01:48
Speaker
It might be a little bit unsightly, but it is completely natural and ah they don't really do much damage to the plant at all. They are a sap sucking bug, but the problems that they cause really ah inconsequential to your lavenders. Look, If you really, really, really want to get rid of them, which I suggest you just leave them. If you can put up with the look of it, I would just get a hose and give a little hose off. But honestly, leave it. They're a part of the ecosystem. They're natural and they are most definitely doing something good in the long run to the ecosystem. So I say, leave them alone.
00:02:27
Speaker
Again, if you'd like to ask me a question, head to my website, thegardenerslodge.co.uk slash podcast. There's a form there, fill it out and I will endeavor to answer your question on the next episode.
Guest Jordan on Integrated Pest Management
00:02:39
Speaker
Today's guest I actually interviewed some time ago. i am chatting with Jordan from The Shed Organics. He's an Australian gardener, educator and public speaker. And he has his own podcast called the shed organics. Uh, I was a guest on his podcast probably about a year ago, and he was a guest on this podcast late last year. Now we chatted for so long in the first episode that I just had to split it into two episodes.
00:03:08
Speaker
The first episode was all about building beautiful, healthy soil, which is his specialty. This episode is all about integrated pest management. What is integrated pest management? Well, it is a system or a framework that we as gardeners should be working towards for dealing with pests in our garden. Instead of reaching for that spray bottle of synthetic chemical pesticides, it is a framework set up to help us prevent and then manage pests.
00:03:37
Speaker
pest problems in our garden. I love chatting with Jordan and I really hope you enjoy this episode. But before we dive into integrated pest management, it is time for Jordan's six rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Ready.
00:03:52
Speaker
Favorite plant? Comfrey. Favorite way to connect with nature? Just to to be out in my garden, honestly. um Just being around the plants, seeing all of the insects, just being involved is probably the most important thing.
00:04:08
Speaker
What's the most beautiful garden or natural landscape that you've visited? o New Zealand, because i lived in New Zealand for a long time and a lot of New Zealand is untouched. Favorite garden tool?
00:04:21
Speaker
Garden tool. Ooh. My hands. Good answer. I've been waiting for someone to say that. Yes, my hands. I don't use too many tools, to be honest. Like, yes, okay, you need some. But my hands.
00:04:33
Speaker
Get in there with your hands. It's best. Nice. If you could be one, a plant or an animal? That stumped me, Michael. Maybe and maybe an animal. When you're looking to research anything, where do you go for the most sound and reliable information?
00:04:47
Speaker
Great question. ah Usually, I have trusted sources that I'll go to. So, I'll have a few different people that I know and I follow on certain social media sites.
00:04:59
Speaker
things. I won't go to a AI chat GPT type situation because it's led me astray before. And it's not, I go to a social media, maybe YouTube is probably the one because I can see people. They often present it in a way that has a lot of visuals. I'm a visual person. So YouTube is really good. I have trusted people that I'll go to and they know what they're talking about and I'll try and trust them as much as I can.
Building Soil Health and Cultural Controls
00:05:24
Speaker
Integrated pest management.
00:05:26
Speaker
IPM. I would encourage before we have this chat, ever everyone go and have a quick Google of like put in IPM garden and then have a look at the pyramid yeah that the system is sort of based on Pull it up right now. So if if I kind of think of it as the the food pyramid that we were all like shown as children. Yeah. Yeah.
00:05:47
Speaker
So there's like, there's debate on whether to have like, you know, four or five different kinds of sections, but so the biggest section is cultural. The next section up is physical.
00:05:58
Speaker
The next one up is biological. And then the smallest is chemical. Yes. Now that probably won't mean a lot to most people, but But I want to ask you, what to you is IPM and how does it differ from other pest management programs?
00:06:16
Speaker
This is wonderful, Michael. I think this is such a widely misunderstood topic because so often we'll see in our gardens a pest, right? For instance, an aphid.
00:06:29
Speaker
And then you go, oh no, I've got some aphids and you'll reach straight for the spray. You'll go straight to that top section on that pyramid and you'll go, i need to fire away and kill all of those aphids. All right.
00:06:41
Speaker
Now, What we're missing is that we're looking for a diverse, balanced ecosystem. This is where we have healthy populations of all sorts of insects and pests.
00:06:56
Speaker
Now, people freak out when I say that you do need some aphids in your garden. You do. We do. We need aphids because things like a ladybug survives off aphids. They come and eat aphids. So, if you don't have a population of aphids, you're not going to have many ladybugs in the garden, for instance.
00:07:14
Speaker
There's a whole bunch of different relationships like this that rely on each other. And this is part of, again, our natural cycle. So integrated pest management to me is exactly that. We're integrating managing the pests in an everyday way.
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm so pleased you brought up the pyramid because this is a way that we can approach the integration of these pest management strategies without reaching immediately for those chemicals.
00:07:48
Speaker
Hopefully organic chemicals, even though organic and chemicals don't usually go in the same sentence, those two words. But anyway, um one really interesting thing that I speak about when I do do IPM talks is...
00:08:01
Speaker
I'm rereading this book at the moment. It's by a gentleman who is ah ah has a PhD in entomology. His name is Philip Callahan. He wrote this book in the 70s. It's called Tuning Into Nature.
00:08:15
Speaker
And what he suggests is that an unhealthy plant actually signals to the insects through the infrared that it is unhealthy.
00:08:29
Speaker
h Now, our insects and our pests, as part of this natural cycle, our nature cycles, they're actually part of our decomposers. So we have composition, we're growing plants, things are growing all over the place, but we also have our decomposers. That's our fungus as well. And our insects.
00:08:49
Speaker
These are ones that are coming in and removing the plants and turning them back into organic matter, killing them off as they're not in line with nature. And now Philip Callahan, this author, suggests that if we're creating really, really healthy plants,
00:09:07
Speaker
then they're not going to be giving off these signals and they're going to be somewhat invisible to the pests and invisible to these insects, which is a really interesting thought.
00:09:18
Speaker
There was this experiment I read about where they had this row of kale in one, ah say, planter box. And then right next to it, they had another row of kale in another planter box. And one of those soils and and treatments was done ah beautifully organically, talking about all the things that we're we're we've got here, all the microbes, all of the life in the soil.
00:09:44
Speaker
And then the next row was completely opposite, or at devoid of all of these things. Now, most of us would think, oh, no, we're going to get these pests that come in and they're going to wipe out all of the kale.
00:09:56
Speaker
They're going to see it and they're just going to wipe out everything. But what happened was they only went for those unhealthy ones and they left the healthy row completely untouched, even though they're right next to each other.
00:10:08
Speaker
which gives us a thought to go, why would they not just jump across to there and start eating that one as well? And this comes back to what Philip was saying in the book is that if it's under stress, it's signaling, it's sending off these signals, these energies, this infrared beacon almost. It's like, hello, over here, I'm not doing so well. This is your job to come in and wipe that out. so when we're talking about our IPM pyramid, when we're working our way up from the bottom, we're talking, as you mentioned, cultural controls on the bottom.
00:10:45
Speaker
Okay? This is where we're building soil health. We're building the life in the soil. This is our compost. These are our microbes. These are all of the things that we can do to build healthy soil.
00:10:58
Speaker
If you would like to hear Jordan's recipe for building beautiful, healthy soil, please listen to our previous episode together. I have linked it in the show notes below. But these things are the base, the basis, the basics of all of this. All right. This is something that we can do and we're trying to do anyway for healthy plants.
00:11:20
Speaker
Yes. So, if you can get all of these things right, then you're already leaps and bounds on your way to preventing pests. the The cultural section on the pyramid also speaks to, you right plant, right place. Right. Yes. So, you know, putting something in the shade when it needs full sun.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yeah. There are so many different elements to this, aren't there? And it's it's something that you kind of just are continuously learning about. You could spend the majority of your time in that bottom cultural section. Like we're all trying to learn how to do that section as well as possible. yeah But you're right. It's looking at trying to develop the most healthy, resilient plant possible.
00:12:01
Speaker
And that does include things like locally adapted varieties, planting in the right seasons, putting things in the right elements with the right amount of sunshine, sunshine and shade and all of this type of thing.
00:12:14
Speaker
Okay. The correct amount of water is another big one. Yeah. Just limiting the amount of stress that that plant is going under.
Perennial Garden Design Guide
00:12:23
Speaker
Do you have a sunny space in your garden that you just don't know what to do with?
00:12:27
Speaker
Well, I have a treat for you. A free perennial garden design that you can download right now. It's full of colour and year-round interest, and the best part is that it's pollinator and wildlife attracting.
00:12:42
Speaker
It's been designed with the UK climate in mind, but I know I've got listeners across the globe. So if you're in the southern states of Australia or the northern part of the US, this is the design for you.
Pest Control Methods and Beneficial Insects
00:12:55
Speaker
You can download your free perennial garden design as well as my free Australian native garden design at the link in the description.
00:13:05
Speaker
Now, there is something to be said about having a low amount of stress. All right. We do talk about when we prune trees or plants, for example, they tend to grow back stronger. The same as when we might go to the gym.
00:13:20
Speaker
We're lifting weights and we're damaging ourselves somewhat to then grow back stronger. So there's there's an optimum amount of stress that can build a little bit of resilience in these plants. Okay. Okay.
00:13:35
Speaker
But bottom line is with our cultural controls, if we're trying to avoid pests, we want healthy plants. We want signaling pure health. And this is more of a prevention style approach. That's a really good point.
00:13:49
Speaker
Prevention is the key word there. And that would move us up to a so you've ended up with a few pests here and there. And then the next kind of section in the pyramid is your like mechanical or physical controls. So I guess in terms of, you know, if you've got weeds, it's hand pulling weeds or picking hand picking off large insects, pests rather.
00:14:12
Speaker
ah You might set some traps or organic baits out for slugs and snails, things like that. yes Yes. Well, I really love how you you started with being there yourself and going in and pulling off, you know, deadheading or, you know, pulling off the pests yourself and and basically tending to the garden because the best fertilizer is a gardener's shadow or or whatever the saying is. It's going in and being present and seeing what's actually going on.
00:14:42
Speaker
Being involved with your plants is a really good way of doing it. You did mention things like traps. Okay. We've we've got all sorts of things like fruit fly traps and things like this. Yeah.
00:14:53
Speaker
But we're also, we could talk about something that borders between the cultural and the mechanical or the physical controls is ah something like a trap plant. Yeah.
00:15:03
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I've used nasturtiums before. Nasturtiums are wonderful self-seeders. They're constant in the garden. They've got beautiful flowers, but they also tend to attract some pests.
00:15:15
Speaker
So they're kind of taking them away from your main crops. And they're also giving them a place to live and ah something to break down. And then that's there for a food population for something else that can come in.
00:15:28
Speaker
Okay. so ah another one is, is things like netting and covering our, our plants or our garden beds. If you've got possums then like I do, yeah then you need some of these really physical barriers to stop things from actually entering in rodents, things like this. Okay.
00:15:47
Speaker
These are where, and birds even as well coming in. So netting is a, is a really, really good one. This is where pruning comes in as well. We're taking off the diseased and the dead stuff off our plants, taking off the dead flowers, taking off any powdery mildew off certain things. We're coming in removing some of these things.
00:16:08
Speaker
Okay. Often with our physical controls, though, it is better to do it all yourself than to kind of set off all these little traps and things like this because you are there you are there yourself in person you're walking around seeing it and you can best understand what's going on i would also say that the a big portion of that is actually and we discussed it in our chat last time that just watching and waiting and not intervening too quickly you know As you were mentioning before, you need the bad guys to attract the good guys. So if you're going to sit there, and I mean, it's very difficult to do this, but, you know, pick every aphid off a rose bush or whatever, then you're never going to really attract the the good guys in to come and beat them up. Yes. But I guess the beauty of a mechanical, physical, human intervention of, you know, pulling them off yourself is that you're generally going to miss a few and you're still going to be able to attract in those good guys. So what you're really kind of doing is preventing a really bad infestation that's going to really harm the plant. So if we talk about that rosebush with aphids, um they're you're going to stop any really harsh damage going on while you're waiting for the intervention of the beneficial insects to come on in and take care of the problem for you.
00:17:33
Speaker
Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. And that leads us nicely onto the next level, which is our biological controls. Okay. This is where we're trying to introduce our beautiful pollinators, our beneficial insects.
00:17:48
Speaker
Now, I actually have currently a little bit of a problem with these foul mites from my chickens. Okay.
00:18:00
Speaker
Oh man, they're in absolute pain because I'm walking around the garden and then they end up on you and you feel like you've got things crawling on you. it's It's bad. And the reason why this is developed is because I've got a lot of breaking down organic matter going into a new section of the garden, which I now have the chickens in.
00:18:17
Speaker
yeah So this is a beautiful breeding ground for these types of things. And because I haven't quite set this area of the garden up yet, There's not a huge amount of plant life or ways of bringing in these beneficial insects yet to help combat that.
00:18:32
Speaker
So I've actually purchased a bunch of predatory mites from a website called Bugs for Bugs. Beautiful resource here in Australia. You can go in and you can...
00:18:45
Speaker
tell them what your problem is, and they will provide you an insect that can essentially come in, develop a population and help control that for you. For all of my yeah UK listeners, we have a couple of companies that do this also. Dragonfly, F-L-I, is a great one. But if you just Google buy beneficial insects or buy beneficial bugs, maybe quite a few options will come up.
00:19:09
Speaker
yeah Now, obviously we don't want to be going in and buying all of these things in ourselves. All right. We want to try and encourage these beneficials to come into the garden.
Garden Coaching and Consultation Services
00:19:22
Speaker
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00:19:28
Speaker
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00:19:49
Speaker
My coaching and consultation sessions can happen right in your garden if you live in the UK or online if you're anywhere else in the world. My goal is to meet you where you are and support your unique garden journey.
00:20:04
Speaker
Whether you're just starting out, looking to refine your skills, or simply need a second opinion, or someone just to bounce ideas off, you have found your space.
00:20:15
Speaker
Head to the link in this episode description or shoot me an email at hello at thegardenerslodge.co.uk.
00:20:26
Speaker
Now, how can we do that? right How can we attract these beneficials? the the The biggest one that people think about is our our bees. okay we It's such ah an obvious one. We want to bring in flowers so that our bees have something to pollinate so that they can come around and pollinate our flowers and pollinate out our food, essentially.
00:20:46
Speaker
all alright But every beneficial insect needs both a food source and a water source. So it's good to have some bits of water sitting around somewhere, maybe a dish here and there or a bird bath or something that you might have that has a little body of water that can encourage these types of things.
00:21:07
Speaker
You want to have some areas where your bees can nest. You want to have our wasps can go and nest our pre our um predatory wasps. They're wonderful.
00:21:17
Speaker
They need some areas. We can use things like our bee hotels or our insect hotels that we can create. It's super easy. You can just go and get a log or ah a, a, you know, a nice branch and just drill some holes in it.
00:21:31
Speaker
And then you've got these gorgeous little holes and places for these insects to go and live. So they need shelter, they need food, and they need water. So that's one thing to really, really ah focus on. Cover crop is an also really, really good one. Okay. It brings, that using this cover crop brings in flowers, brings in areas for them to to work in.
00:21:51
Speaker
Now, Obviously we want to avoid harmful chemicals too. yeah Okay. The chemicals are the ones that like, for instance, I have used diatomaceous earth for combating these, um, foul mites. Right. yeah And I go around and i spread it on the areas where they're, they're developing a bit of a population and Diatomaceous earth is really good for going and drying out the exoskeletons of these really soft bodied insects and and pests.
00:22:25
Speaker
But it doesn't discriminate, Michael. It goes in and it will go get rid of all of our beneficial ones as well. So you have to be really careful. I'm using it because it is a fresh garden space and I don't have a huge amount that's already been built into the soil. I still haven't really planted too much in this area.
00:22:44
Speaker
But that's one that you can use is something
Using Natural Deterrents and Organic Chemicals
00:22:47
Speaker
like this. You've got to be aware of what things are impacting our beneficials as well as targeting that those actual pests. Can I give you a actual, for this foul mite issue you've got, yeah I have chickens as well. Yeah, And what I have planted, and I'm not sure if this will actually grow in your area being a subtropical area, but wormwood?
00:23:08
Speaker
Really? Have you heard of this? So wormwood is- haven't heard for this instance. It's more like, I wouldn't say it's going to fix your problem, but like once you get on top of it with your other means, what you'll be able to do is so take wormwood and put it in the chicken coop litter boxes, And because they're in there all night, Wormwood is a really good, what would you call it? Deterrent. It's a bit of a natural insecticide. Wonderful. um So, yeah, I have a plant. I have two of them right outside my chicken coop, chicken chook yard once a week when I change their litter and whatever.
00:23:42
Speaker
That's not the right word. Litter. You know what I mean? The bedding. The bedding. Bedding. I chuck some of that in. I chuck quite a bit in actually. And it tip prunes the plant, keeps the plant nice and bushy. But then, yeah, also helps prevent mites and S problems inside the coop. Gorgeous. So are you literally just chopping the branch off and just throwing the branches in or like the tips of the leaf litter and everything? Yeah, just the tips.
00:24:06
Speaker
Just kind of tip her in the whole thing and then I just throw it all throughout their bedding. Wonderful. I have very few problems with my chooks. I'm going to do that. definitely going do that. Thank you for the suggestion. Hopefully you can grow it there. I don't know if it'll grow where you are, but maybe it will, probably. I'm going to give it a go. Even if I have to wrangle it from season to season, it's going to be good.
00:24:31
Speaker
So, okay, next up in the pyramid is our chemical controls, which is the smallest portion. And in my mindset is a pretty much a no go, unless things are absolutely haywire, but generally if you've done the rest of the pyramid, you really shouldn't get to this place very often. The rest of the pyramid is designed to avoid this, but chemical controls, and I would say let's completely, completely, completely forget about harsh synthetic chemical compounds. Like let's just stick to organic sprays. And of course, with any of this, different jurisdictions across the world they have different ideas about what should be used in the garden and what shouldn't be used. So just check with your local authority as to what you can and can't use. Even some organic compounds are restricted in some zones. So something that um you can use in this instance is something like bacillus thuringiensis.
00:25:31
Speaker
I always butcher that name, but essentially it's BT or it's dipel or dipel or however you'd like to say it. There's so many different ways people have said it, but This is an organic compound, essentially, that is safe. It's not going to go and harm any of our pollinators or anything like this.
00:25:49
Speaker
But what it does is it targets our caterpillars and our larvae. We have this love-hate relationship for caterpillars because caterpillars can come in and decimate our plants.
00:26:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah. But caterpillars are butterflies. And then people are saying, why aren't I seeing any butterflies? Yeah. Yeah. It's because you're getting rid of all of your caterpillars. yeah So it might be a good idea to understand which caterpillars are going to turn into which butterflies. That's a really good place to start.
00:26:20
Speaker
But if I'm using BT spray, I'm spraying it on the leaves of the plants that I know are being attacked by certain things. Okay. We get these whopping great green grass, sorry, caterpillars that come in and they'll eat my elephant's ears. They'll eat your peace lily um and Monstera sometimes. If you don't catch these early, your beautiful plant that you've worked hard on will be gone in a day.
00:26:50
Speaker
And I'm sure you've gone through that as well. But oh, yeah. ah Up here in Queensland, we face that regularly. And right now is prime season for that type of thing. So okay including a BT spray is something that can really help to mitigate those problems.
00:27:08
Speaker
And it will not only target and and kill the caterpillars and their larvae, but it will also sort of stick around a little bit to make sure that it prevents them from coming back again.
00:27:20
Speaker
Now, something else that we can talk about is a BB spray. Now, this one is Boveria bassiana, and this one is a fungal spore, all right? It's really good for our whitefly, aphids, thrips, things like this.
00:27:38
Speaker
And this one is really good because as with fungal spores in our fungus and things like this, they stick around. They linger around in the soil, and they replicate, they they essentially will stay there for a long period of time providing ongoing ah prevention of these types of things.
00:27:59
Speaker
So a BB one is a really good one to go for as well. Now, we also talked about ah using things earlier like our mycorrhizal fungi, our trichoderma. These things also come into this layer.
00:28:12
Speaker
I would you know, tend to throw them back down into the cultural section, but they also can be something that we can use in those those cultural controls. Okay. But this is coming into where we're starting to get into that intervention side of things. So before we were talking about prevention, we're talking about things that we can do to stop these populations from coming in.
00:28:34
Speaker
But now once we get to to the point where, okay, we've done our best with all of these things, we've hit a point where the populations may be a little bit too extreme for what we need.
00:28:45
Speaker
Yeah. Then we're going to have to come in with something. Okay. And it's okay to come in with something every now and then, especially if it's organic. All right. Now there are so many things, so many things we can use. Okay. Anything um like we spoke about Neem before. Okay. Yeah.
00:29:05
Speaker
Again, go and do your own research into that one, but a wonderful one to use. Something as simple as a chili and garlic spray can often work. Even, you know, dish soap, a Castile soap is something that I use in nearly every one of my sprays because we're using something that's, it breaks the surface tension of the water and it allows it to stick to the plant or yeah stick around on the plant.
00:29:32
Speaker
I use a Castile soap from Dr. Bronner's. Okay. You can find these at your organic stores and they have these gorgeous scented ones as well. I use the peppermint one. It tends to be one of my favorites. Yeah.
00:29:46
Speaker
Also, peppermint's a good insecticide. Exactly. Exactly. For that reason. Yes. For that reason. So, using some of these scents and already proven insecticide based things, we're trying to to include these types of things. So, for example, if I was making a a little bit of a spray up for some aphids,
00:30:05
Speaker
I might use a bit of neem. I might use even some eco oil. It's such a basic one that people can get their hands on. okay I mean, there there can be better versions, but the eco oil is a basic, easy place to start.
00:30:20
Speaker
We're using our Castile soap, our dish soap. okay Again, the better quality, the more organic it is, the better for us it is, and the better for our plants it is. Also, something that's really good, as we mentioned with that peppermint, is essential oils.
00:30:36
Speaker
Now, we really have to be careful because they can easily burn plants. So we don't want to use a huge amount of it. And some are fungicides, some like clove oil and things like that can be detrimental to funguses. But yeah. Yes. So it really depends on the use.
00:30:52
Speaker
What I tend to do is go through and use alternate ones from time to time. i I usually have a bit of a table that um demonstrates kind of which one you can use for what. But what I found is diversity again, Michael. We're coming back to that word. We're diversifying between all of these different oils, trying to essentially not only get those insecticidal benefits, but we're also getting...
00:31:22
Speaker
a little bit of a confusing scent going on in the garden. Companion planting where we're often trying to plant something next to something else to to provide a bit of a scent. This is why putting herbs in and among your vegetables or flowers and things that can confuse these pests.
00:31:40
Speaker
they're They're really good for distracting them and allowing us to to kind of, you know, say, okay, this scent is relates to this. and And a really good thing that I like like to talk about is When we've got an insect that comes in and let's talk about cabbage moth, for example, it comes in, it loves the cabbage. It'll come down and it'll lay its eggs on there. Has a good munch, goes, oh, delicious. This cabbage smell relates to good food. I'm going to lay my eggs here.
00:32:16
Speaker
Now, like with us humans, they have a genetic memory. So when they Those young hatch and they're up there and flying around and they remember that scent.
00:32:31
Speaker
Oh, mom had that scent and that meant really delicious food. i smell cabbage. I'm going down there. And this genetic memory replicates over time. But the same can happen if you're using the same confusing scent.
00:32:45
Speaker
So imagine you've put peppermint on as and as a spray onto your cabbage. but the moth just happens to land on that cabbage and eat it.
00:32:58
Speaker
It's now going to associate the smell of peppermint with a delicious cabbage. Yeah. So now when those young come in and they become mature and they're looking around for a place to like ah lay their eggs, they're also going to associate peppermint with that
Essential Oils and Natural Pest Management
00:33:15
Speaker
as well.
00:33:15
Speaker
So that's why changing the center and changing the the, the, the oil that we might be using or, When we're pulling out one plant or herb and throwing in something else and moving it around the garden, this is why it can confuse them even more.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah. So really important thing to remember is this genetic memory that these insects do have. But I love a few essential oils. They're really, really good. Peppermint. Let's name a few. Peppermint, tea tree, citronella, really good for mosquitoes, especially up here. um You mentioned clove oil to be a little bit careful, but it's still really good. Yeah.
00:33:53
Speaker
Thyme, eucalyptus, rosemary, some really good ones. um Lavender. Yes, lavender. And in fact, you know, grow lavender. Grow it. yeah Yeah. It's so good. So yeah, grow lavender. That's um a really, really good one.
00:34:08
Speaker
um ah come And of course, all these plants too, as you were mentioning before, would be fantastic just to plant in and amongst your veggie patch and your gardens as well. So um just because you've got the oil doesn't mean you can't have that exact plant. and Great point, Michael. Yes, exactly. Plant those plants. They're they're wonderful.
00:34:29
Speaker
um So yeah, moving on from ah from the essential oils, couple of other little... sprays you can use. Okay. One that we might use for our ah fungal diseases, powdery mildew, black spot, something like this is a milk spray.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Milk's been used for ages on, on plants and it's getting, ah essentially it's getting a bad rap these days because it's coming less effective.
00:34:55
Speaker
And we need to look at why is it becoming less effective or why are people saying that it doesn't work so well? Mm-hmm. And the one thing that I point to is the quality of the milk and the processing of that milk.
00:35:10
Speaker
Interesting. Now, you're not going to go and get oat milk or soy milk off the off the shelf and spray that onto your plants. That's not going to work. no It's such a heavily processed, and it's not even real milk, essentially. No. That's the point. so we're talking about cow's milk, goat's milk, camel's milk, something like this. All right? But...
00:35:30
Speaker
If you go to Woolworths, for example, or any kind of shop, and you get yourself a very bog standard, heavily pasteurized, homogenized, heat-treated milk, it does not have any of these enzymes in it. It doesn't have life still in it.
00:35:50
Speaker
Okay, this also, you know, debatable, but it goes the same for us. It's actually yeah really good for us to have milk that's as close to out of the cow as possible.
00:36:02
Speaker
Because it's full of rich of all of those beautiful things that we need. That doesn't work for everybody, but it still is holding true. So when we're using a milk spray, if you can find, you can buy bath milk, okay, they call it bath milk, it's raw milk, it's essentially straight out the cow. Is that right? They call it bath milk because you're not actually allowed to, you're not allowed to sell raw milk.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yes. So it's considered a cosmetic treatment where they sell it so you can have a bath in it or something like that. Oh my God. I had no idea. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So if you're looking, you know, I, I drink this milk.
00:36:39
Speaker
Okay. Because it's so good for you. So, so good for you. But, You're not allowed to go around and say, I'm drinking this milk and buy, you know, bath milk, things like this. But if you're looking for something to spray on your plants, bath milk is the go. Okay.
00:36:54
Speaker
It doesn't last that long because it's not treated. It's not good. All of these things are going to make it shelf stable. But yeah. So once you crack it's going to go off relatively quickly, but you can still buy it. It's not too expensive, but it's the absolute best one that you can use in this instance. Good tip. Okay. Excellent.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yes. So that one's really, really good. Another one you can use for your, um I guess, these fungal things, um something really simple like baking soda. Everyone's got baking soda around. That one's really, really good. um There's plenty of recipes online. That one's been tried and tested.
00:37:29
Speaker
Something else is a copper spray. now Yes. Copper, again, is a naturally occurring substance, but we have to be careful with copper because it can often build up the the salts in the ground.
00:37:46
Speaker
um And any kind of like copper is something that you find in in trace amounts, usually in the ground. It's not a huge, like you don't have a big you know reservoir of copper in the ground often.
00:37:59
Speaker
No. So when if you're using it constantly, we're going to get this buildup of something that we don't generally find in large amounts. So something to be really, really careful. But it it forms this beautiful long-lasting layer on the plants and it's able to stay around and and kind of prevent some of those powdery mildews, the rust that we see on frangipani at the moment in things like this, it's it's prevalent. And often they'll say, you know, if someone down the end of your street has rust on their frangipani, it's going to blow through the air and then everybody's going to get it. And it literally goes, it's just everyone's got rust after a while. So something like a copper is a really, really good one.
00:38:41
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. But the bottom line, Michael, for all of these things is that organic is the way to go. Something that is naturally derived, something that we can find in nature and has these natural qualities.
00:38:58
Speaker
That's what we want to come in and use. We're shooting ourselves in the foot if we're using synthetics. We're undoing all of the work that we've worked really hard to get to the healthy point of having healthy plants, healthy soil, et etct cetera, cetera.
00:39:12
Speaker
So that's essentially our IPM pyramid. That's kind of how I would approach it. um I would focus more so on those cultural controls down the bottom and yeah intervention is there if you need it.
00:39:23
Speaker
When desperate times call for desperate measures. Correct. correct That's right.
Jordan's Journey and Passion for Gardening
00:39:28
Speaker
Yes. All right. I want to like to completely change the subject on you right now. Cool. You obviously have your own podcast.
00:39:36
Speaker
I do. I mean, you might hate this word. I do. You are a garden influencer, I guess. Yeah. Well, yeah. Something like that.
00:39:46
Speaker
but But realistically, you like to um educate people and you're using online platforms to be able to do that. You chat with some amazing guests like yourself.
00:39:58
Speaker
Oh, thank you. But tell me about the process of wanting to get started in yeah the online space in the in the garden realm. Look, I think for me, connection to community and to human beings is such a fulfilling part of my life.
00:40:19
Speaker
And... It's so interesting. I've spent a fair bit of time with the elderly in my life, a little bit of time with people who are nearing the end of their life.
00:40:31
Speaker
And it's so cliche, but they give you these wonderful life lessons about spending time with the people that you love, being interested, following your passion and speaking your truth.
00:40:45
Speaker
And that's something that I'm really trying to do. I love gardening. I love nature. I've been inspired by this my whole life. Yeah. So for me, this is just my passion coming out.
00:40:57
Speaker
Now, when I aim to you know put myself out there, so to speak, as this gardening influencer, ah realistically and selfishly, I'm looking at trying to get myself into a position where I can support my family and earn a living talking about and doing the things that I love.
00:41:21
Speaker
Yeah. This is something that I believe everybody should be aiming to do. And I've done that my whole life. I used to be heavily involved in the music industry. I'm a big musician.
00:41:34
Speaker
And I spent a day, right? Yeah, I was. I was a DJ. Would you believe it? The polar opposite of a yeah garden dwelling creature. And I spent a lot of my time in my early twenties, especially just,
00:41:50
Speaker
working away at this passion on the side until I was able to turn it into something that I could really run with and earn a bit of money from. yeah And it allowed me to see that if I put my mind to something and put in those hours after my day job that pays for the bills and does all the things,
00:42:09
Speaker
Then I was able to build a career or a some form of job or work that I loved showing up for every day. And I was really passionate about. Now, the reason that changed is because I lost the passion for the particular work that I was doing, especially in the DJing realm. okay Unfortunately, it's not the most positive environment for most of the time.
00:42:35
Speaker
yeah And I yearned for that connection back to nature. The environment that I was in was not conducive to the type of person that I was. And coming back into the garden and starting to speak about gardening and also coming from a perspective of Trying to grow healthy food, not only for myself, but my family and for my community.
00:43:01
Speaker
Now, my main job currently and has been for 15 years is a disability support worker. Okay. So I work with a range of people that struggled daily with disabilities.
00:43:16
Speaker
And not only is it extremely humbling and makes me extremely grateful for the things that I have, But it's also given me this opportunity to really work with them on what's best for themselves and how to create the healthiest versions of themselves.
00:43:33
Speaker
And that often comes down to diet. And that's where it started for me is, helping them grow healthy food, understanding the soil systems so that they can best have the the most nutritious food that they can have. That's not going to the supermarkets and buying synthetic sprayed, you know, pesticide laden produce that has really no nutritional content compared to what it should.
00:44:00
Speaker
And From that, I thought, you know, I can share this information. I find it, as you can tell, very easy to speak and put myself and my face out there. Maybe from years of practice with doing the musician thing and whatever, but...
00:44:18
Speaker
I put myself out there. I'm not scared to go and say, hey, like, this is what I think and this is what is good for you and educate. yeah I love that connection. I love seeing the spark inspired in somebody else and seeing them make a change and then learning something and then them sharing it with somebody else. And like you just did for me, you gave me this beautiful remedy for with the wormwood.
00:44:41
Speaker
It's like these connections and these things just provide us with some, some beautiful education and some resources. And yeah we're missing that in this day and age. And that's what ah hanging out with the elderly has taught me is that This connection, this being present with somebody and being able to connect, hear stories and find out all of these different perspectives on life really allows you to have a a much more fulfilling life yourself.
00:45:15
Speaker
And for yeah for me, that that's where it all starts. And that's why sharing this is so easy and fun for me. And the podcast is ah is another part of that. It's like I'm selfishly getting to learn from all of these amazing guests that come on.
00:45:31
Speaker
Right. Exactly. But then I'm also able to then repurpose that and share it to other people and go, hey, like, This is a platform where you can come and listen and learn as well ah alongside me. not I'm not know all and be all of everything, but I'm giving space for us all to learn together.
Conclusion and Resources
00:45:52
Speaker
I think that's why I like the the um format of podcasting is because it is a learning experience. Like today, what you've spoken on has taught me huge amounts. Wonderful. um And that's why I love podcasting is because, you know, the guests really do bring something completely different to your life and make you think differently. Yeah. Yeah.
00:46:14
Speaker
One last thing. You sell your products on your website. That is the shedorganics.com.au. Check it out. You've got also got some free resources on there that people can download. um Where else can people find you on the internet?
00:46:30
Speaker
Well, it's probably easy to say where else can they not find me because I'm virtually everywhere that I can possibly be. So I'm on all all the social media platforms that I can get i can put myself on.
00:46:42
Speaker
And... Although, you know, we speak about these products on the website, but the most important thing for me is the education. Teaching people that they can do it themselves and that they can actually go and create these products from home and they can do it all themselves. It's not about buying from me.
00:47:02
Speaker
And that's not my mission. My mission is to educate, empower and provide knowledge for everybody to be able to do it themselves. yeah So yes, website, all social medias. YouTube is probably somewhere where I will send people as well because there's a lot of my long form videos on there. You get to see where I'm going and what I'm up to in a lot of my talks. So I do a lot of presentations um on all of these types of topics. So I'm starting to really upload a lot more of those.
00:47:33
Speaker
And as I go through some more garden festivals this year, I'm going to be... recording all of those and and putting them up. So that's a really good resource. But anyway, reach out, connect, ask me a question.
00:47:44
Speaker
ah can't wait to to chat to more people. And i love answering questions and diving into each person's individual story and situation. Be careful what you wish for. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Oh, Jordan, thank you so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it. And I've really enjoyed this chat.
00:48:03
Speaker
Michael, it's an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate you and inviting me on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you like the show, don't forget to hit the follow or subscribe button, tell a friend or two, or maybe even give the show five-star rating and a review.
00:48:20
Speaker
If you want more gardeners lodge content, you can find our website, our Instagram and our tip talk in the show notes below this episode. The gardeners lodge podcast is a growing media production.