QuickTake:

The writer has solutions for common garden pests, but squash-bugs and squirrels outwit him.

There are things that want to eat your fruits and vegetables as much as you do. Knowing which ones are worth stopping, and which ones are OK to share with can save you a lot of food and work.

A hole in a lettuce leaf is fine. If it really bugs you, cut the holes out of the leaves before you make your salad.

However, a bunch of aphids on the broccoli makes it unappetizing. (Everyone jokes with me that it is just extra protein, but broccoli is already one-third protein, so I don’t want to eat the aphids.)

Safer Soap will kill the aphids. It may take a few applications. If the infestation gets too bad, the infested broccoli goes to the compost — or the chickens.

Slugs (those gray, fingernail-sized ones) are big problems here in the spring — along with their evil cousins, the snails. Both are imported species, one accidentally, one on purpose. (You can guess which is which.) A 50-50 mix of ammonia and water works when sprayed directly on them. But if you can get that close, there is a way to get a 100% kill rate: Pick them off. I always challenge people to go out each morning and/or evening for five to 10 minutes and pick off snails and slugs. 

Use gloves if you like. I always have thin gloves in my pocket. They keep your hands from cracking when you weed and do other work. After a week, you will have trouble finding any slugs or snails. Sluggo will kill slugs and snails without harming pets or wildlife. A mix of flour, yeast and water will attract slugs and snails for a final swim. It is the yeast they were attracted to in beer (which is often filtered out now).

Flea beetles can be sucked off plants with a cordless vacuum. If you mulch under the plants (arugula is their favorite), you can slow down the infestation.

Leaf miners love beets, but they can be controlled with spinosad, an organic insecticide.

Cabbage worms, which also like broccoli and cauliflower, can be controlled with Bt, Bacillus thuringiensis, another organic insecticide that can be sprayed. Always follow the directions. There is no point in pre-applying the solutions I have described. You might get cabbage worms if they arrive tomorrow, but generally, you spray for the pest; you don’t “pre-poison” the entire plant the way chemically based agriculture does. 

Tolerance is part of gardening. Take out the minor damaged parts of the beet greens before you cook them. Cut out that small section of worm-chewed cabbage. Trim off that spot where something ate a bite of your carrot. The food you grow doesn’t have to look perfect to taste great. I often get aphids on my corn husks in September. I eat only the ears, so the aphids are not really a problem.

One insect pest and one animal pest confound me. Squash bugs can appear overnight and finish off a squash plant the next day. Look for and destroy their egg clusters on the undersides of leaves, and suck the bugs off your plants with a vacuum. Hand-picking is good, too. Sometimes it seems like a flamethrower is necessary. Some years I battle; some years they are not around.

My other nemesis? Squirrels. Bush tailed, yes. Fruit and vegetable destroyers, yes. I don’t mind sharing, but I have not yet figured out how to teach the squirrels that if the first peach you took a bite out of wasn’t ripe, the next 10 will not be either.