Natural Plant Protectors

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

In nature, everything is very harmoniously balanced. For any plant pest, there is a plant-protector that has learned to accumulate chemical elements in their plant tissues that can protect both the plant-protector itself and other plants from pathogenic bacteria, viruses, annoying harmful insects and even rodents. Moreover, often these defenders grow right under our feet, and we indifferently pass by or rank them among the group of weeds, spending a lot of time and energy on their destruction

Wise people say that if a person wants to get rid of an enemy, one should not grab a weapon, but try to turn it into a friend. Exactly the same should be applied to the "weeds", which have an enviable unpretentiousness to living conditions and are distinguished by boundless love of life. After all, there were times when such useful cereals as Oats and Buckwheat were listed among people in the list of weeds.

Yellow Eyed Sun Dandelion

Instead of “taming” the unpretentious and resilient Dandelion, directing its amazing abilities to the benefit of the garden-garden, the plant was easily registered in the detachment of “annoying weeds”, methodically eradicating it from the subject territory. But, wise nature, knowing about the beneficial properties of the plant and not trusting the barbarian man, endowed it with a branched taproot that goes into the soil to a depth of more than half a meter, and supplied its numerous achenes with light parachutes that a person cannot keep up with. So Dandelion "rages" where the terry gardener does not hunt for it.

Although Dandelion for its inflorescence-basket is reckoned by botanists to the Astrovye family, a thick milky sap flows through all its "veins", similar to the sap of plants of the Euphorbia family. It contains substances that can slow down the reproduction of ticks that love to spoil the leaves of vegetable plants, thereby reducing the protective reactions of cultivated plants. The preparation of the drug is very simple. We collect 400 grams of Dandelion leaves, cut them into smaller pieces, and brew with a liter of boiling water. After a couple of hours, we spray the leaves affected by ticks with the strained solution.

Tansy and bitter wormwood

Like Dandelion, Tansy and Wormwood are unpretentious and ubiquitous. It is enough to leave two or three bushes of these plants in the garden to forget about the fight against a number of insect pests. The aroma of Tansy is not to the taste of ants, Colorado potato beetle, earthen flea beetles, and therefore a few Tansy bushes will noticeably increase, for example, the potato yield. By the way, the Colorado beetle also does not like the Elecampane plant, which today some gardeners even plant in flower beds.

To preserve the harvest of carrots, cabbage, apples, you should use the help of Wormwood. This plant is not held in high esteem by the cabbage and carrot flies, by the white cabbage butterfly, as well as by the apple moth, which loves to spoil the fruits not only of the apple tree, but also of the pear, plum, and peach.

Donnik and Bird cherry

The Melilot plant belongs to the glorious legume family, and therefore is a healer for the soil, enriching it with nitrogen - "bread" for most earthly plants. Donnik has many abilities attractive to humans, one of which is the smell that scares away nimble mice from the beds.

Bird cherry leaves exude phytoncides, lethal not only for ordinary gray mice who love to feast on other people's bins, but also for terrible rats, the mere mention of which causes nervous tremors.

Licorice and Euphorbia

While the above-described plants are home-grown and well-known to Russian gardeners, then such mouse-fighters as Euphorbia and Licoris are more exotic and prefer a warm climate.

In Japan, for example, rice growers surround rice fields with spectacular defenses of the picturesque Lycoris, whose bulbs are poisonous and dangerous to mice.

The spurge plant, which was a popular houseplant in our country, but recently undeservedly forgotten by flower growers, is not to the taste of mice.

Of course, there are many more helper plants in nature than the format of the article allows.