Week 7 | 2024
I wasn’t supposed to be able to grow cauliflower without pesticides. Experienced farmers told me that any brassica crop in the valley would be overrun with caterpillars and infested with aphids if you didn’t zap them every ten days with an insecticide. And if the aphids and caterpillars didn’t kill your plants, they warned, clubroot would.
A beginner, I believed them. Before our first planting, I asked our crop consultant which sprays I would need to combat the swarms of pests that were sure to show up. I wouldn’t be attacked by surprise. He supplied me with various chemicals and an application schedule. I bought a new sprayer to pull behind my shiny new tractor.
We planted the first cauliflower in April 2013 and over the next couple days I watched miserably as wireworm and cranefly larvae devoured half the crop. These were two pests I wasn’t prepared for or even warned about. My biggest fears were confirmed before my eyes, and I gave up on the crop entirely. Soon, caught up in all the busyness of planting, weeding, harvesting, and running our market, the cauliflower was completely left to the whims of nature.
Then, one day in early July trellising tomatoes in the greenhouse, my son came running towards me yelling, “it’s ready, it’s ready, the cauliflower is ready.” I remember the incredulous feeling that rose from within. Impossible, I thought. It’s probably the most worm-eaten, scrawny, pitiful cauliflower ever grown. But there it was, the most perfect head of cauliflower I had ever seen. It wasn’t big, but it was free of disease and pests.
Not all the other brassicas that spring were as beautiful. Some were colonized by aphids and their leaves were caterpillar eaten. Others were stunted, deprived of their root system by ground-welling pests. But I knew that if we could grow one plant without pesticides we could grow more.
I made an interesting discovery in those early years of farming. I noticed that it’s not the disease and pests that make an unhealthy plant. Instead, it’s an unhealthy plant that becomes susceptible to disease. Humans are no different. When we’re stressed, binge on junk food, over-consume alcohol, or don’t get enough exercise, our immune system is weakened and we’re asking for problems.
Healthy plants, growing in living soil with a flourishing microbiome can build compounds that ward off pests and they can regenerate roots, leaf and stem when attacked by gnawing insects. Healthy plants grow faster and produce more carbon sugars to feed the community of life in the soil. These soil microbes in turn provide the plants with a greater supply of nutrients and act as the plants protector. Our task, therefore, was simple: grow healthy plants and promote soil biology. Eliot Coleman, a pioneer in the market gardening space, refers to this type of farming as plant positive as opposed to pest negative.
That day in July I decided that we would learn to farm without chemicals. I returned the unopened jugs of poison and the pallets of chemical fertilizers to the consultant and informed him that his services were no longer needed.
That’s not to say we haven’t had our share of pest problems in the years that followed. But every time we experience these challenges, we discover new ways to boost plant health. Simply by increasing farm biodiversity and keeping the ground covered as much as possible with plants and mulch already makes a profound impact on growing healthy crops and promoting the health of the underground support staff.
No farmer is happy spraying their crops with toxins and no farmer is happy paying for these chemicals. Unfortunately, most blindly follow the guidance given by the provincial agriculture bureau and the experts representing the chemical companies. Often farmers don’t see an alternative and fear the risks and unknowns of farming without chemicals.
But once farmers stop relying on things that kill and begin to promote the health of plants and beneficial soil microbes, their yields will increase, and profits will soar. These are big incentives. But healthier plants also means healthier humans and a healthier planet and this should be the greatest motivator of all.