The Garden Doctor: The safest, most effective garden spray: H2O

Who among us hasn't had a favorite plant chewed to bits by hordes of bugs, or watched the lawn quickly transform into a collage of brown and green as some weird fungus among us quietly attacked? And we've also noticed helpful critters in our gardens -- ladybugs, lacewings, wasps, spiders, lizards, birds and snakes, all filling their tummies with tasty plant-feeding insects and mites, ignoring the foul-tasting carnivorous beneficial bugs (such as ladybugs). Bees and butterflies zip from bloom to bloom, pollinating our fruits and veggies.

A healthy landscape is also one with fertile soil teeming with beneficial microorganisms, and a diverse mix of plants harboring far more carnivorous beneficial critters than plant-damaging herbivores. And once this balance is achieved, gardening requires far less work and expense while offering vastly more joy and relaxation.

But the trouble with nonselective pesticides, even natural ones, is that they tend to kill off all the inhabitants in the garden, so that a large population of beneficials cannot be established. Then the cycle continues: So much damage ensues that gardeners apply pesticides once again, ad infinitum. I call these chemicals "agricultural crack," because gardeners can never use enough of them.

Yet those of us who garden organically, relying on the same principals of ecological balance that largely have sustained the planet for more than 4-billion years, have gardens remarkably free of pest problems. By not using fungicides and insecticides and instead focusing on creating healthy soil, in time we end up with many allies in the garden controlling pests for us.

As with any philosophy, there are wild-eyed fundamentalists in the realm of organic gardening demanding absolute purity, condemning, for example, using soap spray because "it can irritate mucous membranes in the eyes," or even banning tap water in the garden because it contains chlorine.

But the vast majority of organic gardeners simply want to protect their lawns, gardens, children, pets, the environment and their budgets. Many Floridians remember the fire ant pesticide Mirex causing pelicans to keel over (but not the fire ants!) in the '60s and '70s, before it was banned, just as the bald eagle population was almost lost to DDT. Toxic herbicides once thought to stay in the soil and break down have leached into the groundwater, causing wells to be capped off.

But I prefer shades of gray to black and white, and so I will be sharing periodically some of the least-toxic pest control tips that have helped me and my clients over the years cheaply and easily defeat the villains while letting the good guys multiply.

A favorite pesticide of many gardeners is . . . water. Yup, water! A boiling tea kettle of it effectively will nuke a fire ant nest or weeds in the seams of sidewalks. A morning rinse of it from a spray nozzle on your roses can do wonders to reduce powdery mildew by washing off the airborne spores.

A sharp, coarse spray of it will blast off thousands of aphids, white fly and spider mites from okra, junipers, roses, tomatoes and potted plants. It also rinses off the dust that spider mites love to live in. In drought conditions, water is precious, so using it to control pests also helps us water our plants well within watering restrictions -- two birds with one stone, as they say.

A yard safe for ladybugs is safe for our families and butterflies and birds. Hey, a pesticide I can brush my teeth with makes sense to me!

- John A. Starnes Jr. may be reached at the.garden-doctor@worldnet.att.net.

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