Question: I love kale and it grows well in my garden, but I am always fighting spider nests, worms and insect eggs. How do I remedy this problem? – Rosa B., Ontario

Answer: Hi Rosa,

So glad you reached out!

Native worms and regular spiders act as beneficials in the garden. However, if you’re having to deal with all that on your leaves, it will make harvesting much easier and more enjoyable if you discourage them from that area and take care of the insect eggs as well.

The first thing you can do is start scuffing the top few inches of soil once or twice a week in the area you’ll be planting your kale. This is actually a good idea to do over the entire garden, but especially the areas where you’re having trouble.

Also, be sure 30% of your garden is perennial herbs and flowers. There are many edible flowers you can plant too so you don’t have to lose out on harvesting amounts. These plants bring in beneficials and help keep pest levels down.

You can also add at least one generalist predator beneficial (like lacewings) and beneficial nematodes to your soil.

These beneficials prey on eggs, larva, and pupae in the soil and can help reduce your pest populations.

Those are the top three things you can do to get more support from nature and have her do the work for you!

I hope that helps, Rosa!

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Question: How do I get rid of voles/moles – with no pesticides or other things that will hurt people. – Kathryn P.

Answer: Hi Kathryn,

Great question!

Just in case anyone reading this doesn’t know, moles are actually a beneficial in almost all cases. Usually when we see ground damage we blame moles, but usually it’s voles or other burrowing animals.

Moles usually live individually, so you’ll almost always just see one. It is rare to find a gathering of more than one or two moles.

Moles are insectivores, so they don’t damage plants. Occasionally a plant will be toppled by accident, but the benefit they provide can be worth the few plants that get toppled, as moles eat grubs and other pests that burrow deeper into the soil than we can get to.

Voles are a different story. Not only do they eat plant matter, but they also carry human diseases, so we definitely don’t want them around our food.

For smaller, more burrowing rodents like voles and mice, you’ll need barriers below and above ground where the holes in the fence are no bigger than dime size. Anything bigger than that and they can squeeze through.

There are many different strategies for this type of fencing. The one that seems to work the best is to get quarter-inch hardware cloth. You want the hardware cloth 2 feet down and 1 foot horizontally. So, if you make an L shape where the bottom of the L heads into the garden, that’s ideal.