It didn’t take long before I realized that although the greens were greener, and the tastes tastier, the bugs were a huge threat. While planting my first row of bok choi, within my first hour, of my first day, I was told to chomp away on extra baby bok choi greens that needed to be pulled from the pots.
And chomp I did, until about half way through the row when Ilene came to see how everything was going. Aphides. Sneaky little guys hiding in the creases of the leaves. Tons of them, and tons of them in my stomach.
“I knew we should’ve got the plants out of the hoop house earlier,” Ilene told me, but with that she also said not to worry because they would try to kill off the pesky critters.
Me, being as new to the farming field as the baby bok choi were that day had no idea how you could possibly kill off hundreds of little aphides. “I think milk works for aphides,” claimed Ilene.
Although those aphides seemed to clear themselves out with the unsteady early summer temperatures, I found out that not only is milk a good organic pesticide, but eggshells, garlic, and organic soaps can also do the trick. No need to use pesticides that unleash harsh chemicals to the earth, simple natural tricks do the job just as well!
