What Is a Trap Crop?
A trap crop is just what it sounds like. It's a crop that you plant to trap pests that would otherwise attack other garden crops. Basically, a trap crop is a decoy for your kale, spinach, and lettuce plants—it attracts all the aphids and caterpillars its way so that those bugs stay away from your beautiful salad greens.
Let me say this sooner rather than later: Pests are a normal part of the garden. Everybody has them. If you're growing an organic garden, you're going to have pests. It's just part of the deal, and it's not something to get stressed out about. If you're focusing too much on the pest, you'll miss the best parts of the garden.
Let's put it this way. We just have to learn to live with pests. But that doesn't mean we roll over and let them eat all our food.
Our goal here at Gardenary is to make gardening easier and more practical. Using trap crops to deal with pests is a really easy way to make gardening not just easier, but more enjoyable. Let's look at how to use trap crops.
Plant Trap Crops for Vegetables and Leafy Greens
Oftentimes, people will see pictures of plants in my garden, like my Swiss chard, for instance, and say something like, "How do you not have any holes in your leaves? How are the leaves so beautiful and green?”
And one of the answers is trap crops.
Right next to my Swiss chard, I grow calendula. I largely neglect my calendula. I don't deadhead the flowers. I basically just let it do its own thing, but it's still serving my plants and my overall kitchen garden as a trap crop.
Calendula is one of those plants that actually attracts pests to the garden. Weird, right? Most people would be like, “Well, I don't want to grow that because I don't want to grow something that's going to bring pests to the garden. I want them to get out of my garden already!”
Calendula and Other Trap Crops Are a Chemical-Free Way to Deal with Pests
But the beauty is that a plant like calendula attracts the pests to it, keeping them off of the plants that you care more about, like your Swiss chard, your peppers, your kale, and your cherry tomatoes.
If you look at my leafy greens and fruit-bearing plants, they don't have holes in them. They don't have pests on the stems. But if you look closely at my calendula, which is right next door, they are covered in aphids, literally covered.
I am totally okay with having aphids all over my calendula if that means that the greens right behind it are going to be super beautiful and unaffected by pest pressure.
Planting some trap crops in your kitchen garden is a great organic way to deal with pests and to let them do their thing without destroying the plants that you care the most about.
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The Benefits of Planting Trap Crops
Here are a few reasons why I think trap crops are a great addition to any kitchen garden:
Benefit #1
Trap crops are an organic way to deal with pests—no pesticides or synthetic sprays that could harm pollinators and other beneficial insects in your garden required. Skipping the sprays is much better for the health of your overall garden and, of course, the environment.
Benefit #2
It's also very cheap pest control. A bag of calendula or nasturtium seeds only costs a couple bucks.
Benefit #3
It keeps the pests in one place for easier disposal. (More on that in a bit!)
Trap Crops List
The key to success with trap crops is knowing which pests you’re dealing with and what plants they prefer. Plant the following trap crops based on the type of pest pressure you've faced in your garden space before:
- Grow marigolds near your tomato plants to prevent nematodes from attacking their roots.
- Grow dill around your tomatoes to prevent tomato hornworms from eating your entire fruiting crop.
- Plant radishes and nasturtiums around your brassicas (like broccoli, kale, and cabbage) to trap flea beetles. Even if pests wreak havoc on your radish leaves, you can still get a root harvest.
- Grow nasturtiums and calendula to trap aphids.
- Grow collard greens around cabbage to prevent cabbage worms from ruining your cabbage heads.
- Plant sunflowers to trap stink bugs.
- Add globe amaranth to keep cucumber beetles off your cucumbers, pumpkins, and squash plants.
- Plant the highly desirable Blue Hubbard squash on the perimeter of your garden to trap squash bugs, cucumber beetles, and the dreaded squash vine borer. This will protect the rest of your squash plants.
How to Deal with Pests on Trap Crops
You've got a trap plant swarming with pests that you've attracted to your garden. Now what?
Well, you can leave them for nature to handle on its own. I don't really stress about aphids on my calendula stems, for instance, as long as I don't come out to my garden and see the aphids migrating to my other plants. Plus, those calendula flowers are still completely pick-able and edible even when aphids have been hanging out on the stalks.
If you leave the pests, natural predators will come eventually. They'll be attracted to the pests, just as the pests were attracted to your trap crop. Think about nature. Your garden is a little ecosystem. It doesn't exist in isolation. If these aphids hang out in your garden long enough, you're sure to see a predator like a ladybug or hoverfly larvae come along and take care of them for you.
There are a couple of other options to organically deal with them, as well. Here are my recommendations for potential next steps.
Remove the Pests by Hand
Thanks to their larger size, caterpillars and hornworms are super easy to remove by hand. Drop them in soapy water or leave them by a bird feeder as an offering.
Cut the infested stems
Drop the pest-covered stems into a bowl of soapy water immediately after you've pruned them, before the pests have time to scatter into your garden.
Treat the trap crop on its own
Instead of having to treat every plant in your garden, you can just treat your trap crop. Some Castile soap diluted in water or garlic spray will take care of most pests after a couple applications.
Time to Plant Some Trap Crops
Trap cropping works best as part of a broader integrated pest management strategy. Combine this method with other organic practices, like companion planting (or just having more plant diversity in your garden space), attracting beneficial insects to your garden, replanting your garden each season, using row covers, practicing good garden hygiene, and more.
As you can see, there are so many ways to deal with pests in your garden without reaching for those chemical sprays. That means you get to harvest and enjoy the good stuff you want to eat without having to worry about what those leaves are coated with. You'll have a healthy and productive garden, while maintaining a more balanced ecosystem.
So don't stress about pests, my friends, because that just takes away the joy of the kitchen garden. Go out and enjoy your garden, pests and all!
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