Lehman's Country Life

Greetings from “Land’s End ” in Nova Scotia

Bugs, the nemesis of all gardeners, are especially persistent in our organic garden this year and in the hot house. Bill has never used anything but organic natural methods in gardening here for twenty-three years.

It took three years , after planting our first garden , to have a decent harvest. The farm was run out and neglected for about thirty years before we bought it. The land was full of wire worms, thistles, wild bamboo, wood ticks and dead grass. Bugs and weeds have been a very real challenge. They were thriving together before we took over this farm.

Those first years our potatoes were full of wire worms. Wire worms are often found in old sod ground that hasn’t been tilled for a long time. Over the space of several years my husband studied the life cycle of the wire worm. He discovered by digging the potatoes earlier than usual he could interfere with the life cycle of the little critters. They were disturbed before they got into the potatoes or had time to reproduce. Eventually the wire worms were gone from that one field. Digging potatoes early meant smaller ones but at least they were free of wire worms.

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