Learngardening - Blog Posts

Great ideas

What Are Trap Crops? Trap crops are grown to take some of the pest pressure off of your main crops, by being even more attractive to pests. They are a diversion, a metaphorical bone that a gardener throws to the pests so they ignore your real food. For example right now I’ve got strawberries as a main crops with clover as a cover crop interspersed. The clover fixes nitrogen, which feeds the soil and is occasionally trimmed short and chopped + dropped. That clover is also acting as a trap crop. With a thriving thrip population that’s showing no signs of stopping, you’d think I’ve got a bit of a problem on my hands - yet I don’t. I don’t because the thrips are targeting only the clover and are completely avoiding my strawberries altogether. The nitrogen-fixing cover crop is also “trapping” (distracting) thrips making them a total non-issue. Now that’s […]