We recently received the following question: I am a home vegetable/herb gardener in San Diego.  I have only been growing for three years, so I am still learning.  I tried to grow cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage last cool season and they looked so wonderful.  I harvested them and got ready to cook, and they were FULL of aphids!  What a disappointment.  I spoke to my local nursery, Walter Anderson, and they advised me to “just give up growing cole crops organically.”  Well, I just refuse to believe that!  Can you help me with some tips on controlling aphids on my cole crops here in San Diego?  I'm in Sunset climate zone 23. Thanks, Jennifer Boles

For the answer, we contacted Nick Sakovich and here are this thoughts.

I wouldn't give up. There are some things to do: The two main organic insecticides you can use are horticultural oils, including neem oil, and soap sprays. These will do a decent job. Spraying when you first see the problem, i.e. when the aphid population is low, is best. Other organic insecticides that can be used -- but are more toxic to humans and beneficial insects -- are the pyrethrins (derived from the chrysanthemum flower) and rotenone. One should always read the labels to make sure the product is registered to be applied to that particular crop. When spraying with insecticides, repeat applications are needed since the sprays usually do not control all stages of the insect’s life cycle. Labels usually recommend at least two applications at 5 - 7 days apart.

Other options (click "read more" for rest of article):

We seem to have at least two different pests in the garden this summer that are eating our trees. Any help and advice about how to help the trees, without poisoning their fruit (or us) would be much appreciated.

Peach Tree Leaves are Curling and Turning Red

Exhibit A is a photo of the leaves on one of our Peach Trees.

Whatever it is that is plaguing this Peach Tree is causing the leaves to curl and turn a kind of burnt reddish-orange color.

We have four Peach trees and this only seems to be happening toone of them this year. I've seen this in past years on another of the trees, but it's worse than ever this year and is affecting nearly all of the new growth leaves on the tree pictured here.

Avocado Tree Leaves Have Spots

Exhibit B is a photo of the leaves on our Avocado Tree. I love this tree, which is about 30 feet tall and produces bushels of avocados every year. I’ve seen these spots on the leaves before, but never so many and on so many leaves.

Please add your comments with any suggestions for how to combat these pests and save our beloved trees (and their wonderful fruit).

Thank you for your help!
The Accidental Gardener

Called the "eco-oracle" by Wine Spectator magazine, "Amigo Bob" Cantisano is a legend in the organic gardening field. I had the opportunity to learn a ton from him during a recent workshop on the Heart of Organic Gardening up at Esalen.

Amigo Bob started with a factoid: There are 70,000 different species of insects in the world and less than 100 are pests in the garden. The rest are our allies. That's pretty cool, huh? We have 69,900 allies! Yea!

So the question becomes: how do we get these allies into our gardens? The answer is through diversity. The greater the diversity, the more stability a garden has. So if you're growing mostly vegetables, you will want to add flowers and herbs and allium (onions, garlic, etc.) as they attract the beneficial insects (those allies we talked about) like ladybugs, which are predators and eat the pests, and wasps, which are parasites and love to lay their eggs within the little buggers.