Free The Wisdom of the Radish by Lynda Browning

The list of potential predators sounds like warriors plucked from a 1970s sci-fi novel: tachnid flies, parasitic nematodes, braconid wasps.
    Every time I see those clear plastic boxes of live ladybugs for sale at the checkout stand of the hardware store, I’m tempted to buy one and crack the lid to watch the ladies parachute across the store on their little red wings, settling on green garden hose coils and bright red rakes, yellow seed packets and dark sacks of compost, carabiner key chains and Mars Bars. Now that I had a pest problem, maybe I had a good excuse to live out my fantasy.
    Trouble is, when you release one thousand ladybugs into an unbalanced ecosystem like my field (or a hardware store, for that matter), you’re lucky if one or two stick around long enough to have a light aphid snack before fluttering on to greener pastures. The bugs-in-a-box miracle I’d been eyeing was nothing more than an agricultural placebo—designed to make the home gardener feel better without actually doing anything.
    But rumor has it that if you create a habitat for ladybugs—and other friendly predators—and draw them in from your surroundings, then you’ve got a long-term solution. (Pre-packaged
predators do better when released into this setting as well.) To create a predator-friendly habitat, some farmers let wilderness thrive on the edges of their fields; some plant hedgerows of native plants in swaths that divide their fields; some design insectaries to attract good bugs with a carnival of colorful flowers. Similarly, some farmers will mix repellent plants in with their crops to keep the bad bugs away. Broccoli, calendula, catnip, goldenrod, nasturtiums, radishes, rue, and tansy are all said to fend off cucumber beetles. An alternative to the repellant crop is the trap crop: a tasty plant that draws pests away from your real market crops. For instance, an abundant row of sacrificial radishes can keep flea beetles occupied while a nearby row of cabbages matures.
    Although I would have loved to plant some trap crops, or raise a hedgerow, or create an insectary, none of these would solve my short-term problem. I had too many Diabrotica and flea beetles eating my greens right then , and building up a reservoir of predators can take years. I didn’t even know if we’d be on this property a year from now. And we certainly wouldn’t be growing vegetables on the exact same spot; our field was destined to be replanted in grapes next spring. So, like roughly 30 percent of young farmers in the United States, we couldn’t plan very well for the future because we didn’t control the land we were cultivating. 19
    Back to square one. Squishing the bastards didn’t work. Spraying organic pesticides only slowed them a little. We determined wacky home brews to be too time-consuming and biological control too long-term. We wracked our brains for a magic bullet.
    When we finally come to a solution, it was painfully obvious what we should do—and what we should have done all along.

    â€œIt says it right on the seed packet ,” Emmett said woefully.
    â€œDon’t be too hard on yourself. We were busy.”
    â€œWe’re always busy. That’s no excuse.”
    With Emmett’s discovery, we stopped thinking like Americans and started acting like Russians: we retreated and hid under blankets of white.
    Obviously, there was no snow involved in a Sonoma County summer. But a floating row cover helped us disappear in the midst of a siege. Translucent enough to let 75 percent of light through while providing a physical and visual barrier to invaders, the only downside to this polyester fabric was its cost (and the fact that it would start to disintegrate after a couple of months of sun). We coughed up $40.65 at the local agriculture store for a 6-by-250-foot roll and squeezed the awkward package into our station wagon, shimmying it between the driver and passenger seats. (On our