DO NOT use sevin -- bad stuff. It kills all the beneficials like you mentioned. BT only kills caterpillars. Available at any nursery or garden center.

Kevin

What can I do to improve the good guys who eat the bad guys coming to our garden?

The best thing you can do is avoid using pesticides and for that to work you have to be accepting of of more pest damage than many are willing to accept.

Dave

Organic gardening and its tolerance of less than perfection is all a matter of degrees. ie : most of the leaves eaten off the plants vs. some holes in leaves. Or how many army worms per square foot of soil. 1-3, no problem, 10-12 a real problem.

You'd be amazed at the number of gardeners who panic at even some holes in leaves and call it "destroying my beans" when they post or they find one worm and decide their garden must be infested with them. Without a photo of the damage we can only deal with the info given.

Ultimately the choice is yours as to when to intervene. Organic gardening only asks that you keep a realistic perspective.

Dave

Take aphids, for instance. First, I rub them off my seedlings. A couple weeks later, if I still see them, I try jets of water every 3 days. After a week or 2 of that, if I still see them, I use insecticidal soap or neem oil every few days. If I still see them after that, I MIGHT order ladybugs or green lacewing eggs and release.

But really, I'm hoping that my IPM program is already in effect of the last treatment. That is--- planting flowers and herbs to bloom at different times of the year to attract the good bugs and keep the populations at bay.

Research Integrated Pest Management. I'm no expert on it, but I've noticed a great reduction in damage to my plants since I started it and an occasional usage of target specific organic pesticides such as those I've mentioned in this thread.

Here's a few links that may be helpful.

http://www.organicgardeninfo.com/beneficial-insectary-plants.html

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/pest management/plants_attract_beneficial.html

Kevin

Sluggo for slugs
Neem for many aphid like bugs
Copper fungicide for moldy type stuff
Bt for caterpillars
High-ish pressure water spray to keep aphids off some plants (I don't do this to tomatoes as they don't like to get wet. But I do hose aphids off zucchini, greens and such)

What I've learned about all of these things is if you wait for the bugs to show up, you're often too late. They all work better as a preventative measure.

We keep a huge organic garden and never spray anything except BT sometimes in September for control of cabbageworms and armyworms on fall broccoli and cabbage. Instead of asking how to keep bugs out, we grow lots for flowers which attract huge numbers of beneficial and benign life forms. Hand picking of unwanted insects is usually easier, faster and safer than spraying.

Sometimes the good guys do their own damage. These sunflowers growing in not-yet-food-grade manure, while really ratty looking under their minor little canopy, are actually healthy. Don't know yet if they'll stay far enough ahead of the damage to work out. The small finch/sparrow sized birds find them to be an agreeable shelter (I flush them out of the big flowers and the cukes regularly) but they do nibble. A lot.

They seem to love cherry tomatoes too, but I don't see many nasties anywhere. Flowers, bugs, septic manure, tomatoes, bird song, it's all a jumble. It's a trade off. It's a whole bunch of fun.

So, the first year it gets to sit and grow flowers or such. Lots of field marigolds; crazy about those. Because of a suggestion I read here, I have one un-aged bed growing okra (and marigolds), and since nobody actually eats okra, it's really just a cover crop.

Next year the two flower beds that are sitting sort of fallow will get food in them. Marigolds too since they're unstoppable self seeders. I figure that any trace pathogens and perhaps herbicides will be minimized by then. Until that time, I think of the beds as septic, as in germy and dangerous to health.

I come from deep in the chemical culture. I dipped my dogs in sevin, sprayed the yards for ticks with malathion, fogged my house while still inside it, and hoarded some of the last bags of DDT in Virginia. I've driven perhaps 2 million miles in my life, most of which was inhaling Carbon Monoxide loaded with tetra-ethyl lead. I used to play with mercury in my hands and spit it through a pea shooter. I've inhaled herbicides that our government said were harmless. I believed in the slogan of better living through chemistry.

I don't believe those god damned bastards any more. I just had to draw a line and stick to it. Had to start being careful.

In the last year I've used two chemicals. Chalk that up to luck. One was mosquito dunks as a source of BT for house plants that got a bit loaded with gnats. The other was Epsom salts. Knock on wood. Knock on wood again. Everything else came from stable manure, plant waste, and household garbage. Again, luck, and a willingness to let stuff get eaten by critters.

Sorry. I'll shut up now. Goodbye.