Designing Sustainable Small Farms

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Manure Worms: The small red manure worm produces a superb humus from its castings. Worm beds offer a good method for recycling vegetable scraps, as they provide an excellent soil amendment.

Birds: Recent farming literature may lead one to believe that birds are universally destructive. However, in the 20's and 30's many winged species-including woodpeckers, purple martins, barn swallows, nuthatches, and chickadees-were recognized as integral to pest control programs. Today in apple orchards in Nova Scotia, downy and pileated woodpeckers are used to destroy as much as 50% of the over wintering codling moth population. The essential prerequisite for any feathered aid is a suitable habitat for the birds. Woodpeckers, for instance, need nesting sites in dead trees in adjacent forests.

Biological Pest Control: In recent years, many new nonchemical pest controls have been introduced. Disease organisms are now available for controlling Japanese beetles, codling moths, corn earworms, gypsy moths, mosquitoes, and insects in the lepidoptera family. Several fungi have been tested for controlling plum curculio, Colorado potato beetles, cabbage loopers, and European corn borers. Some nematode species are effective against grasshoppers, Mexican bean beetles, tent caterpillars, and codling moths. Literally hundred of parasitic and predatory insects have been identified as well. Photos D and E picture two familiar pest predators: the praying mantis and the garden toad.

Habitat Enhancement: Biological control can be enhanced by manipulating noncrop vegetation. For example, establishing plots of umbelliferous plants-such as the wild carrot, parsley, parsnip, Queen Anne's lace, and caraway-will attract hordes of parasitic wasps that use these flowers as food sources. Even encouraging a spider's web can be a means of pest control (Photo F) ... in this case, for the common whitefly. Flowers adjacent to a backyard garden attract beneficial insects (Photo G): In the Cape Cod Ark at- the New Alchemy Institute, we've used scented geraniums as host plants for the whitefly and its parasite, Encarsia formosa. (We add homemade yellow-orange sticky traps in the spring-Photo H-to complete our year-round pest-control system.)

Nitrogen-Fixing Plants: In addition to the common legumes, more than 160 nonleguminous nitrogen-fixing plants have been identified. These shrubs and trees can make available up to 300 pounds of soil nitrogen per acre per year. Common members of this group include the alders, Russian and autumn olives, and the sweet fern and bayberry. The white nodules of the root system of the autumn olive (Photo I) indicate the site of nitrogen fixation. Such plants can be used in a variety of ways to substitute for bag nitrogen: The herbaceous species are often included in crop rotations or as orchard understories ... while shrubs and small trees can be interplanted with fruit, nut, or forest trees.

Allelopathic Plants: Many plants produce substances that are toxic to their competitors ... conducting, in essence, their own chemical warfare. Certain varieties of wheat, rye, barley, sorghum, and sudan grass, for example, can be grown between orchard rows or in gardens, and the clippings from these varieties can then be used as weed-suppressing mulches.

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