Farm builds grass strip

to give beneficial

creatures a home

PHILOMATH — John Eveland doesn’t look like a typical farmer in his baseball hat, old pink dress shirt, shorts and sandals, but he still has dirt under his fingernails — and toenails.

Gathering Together Farm, which Eveland owns with his wife, Sally Brewer, is trying a new method of dealing with pests that isn’t typical, either.

This year, Gathering Together created a “beetle bank” with the help of Oregon State University.

The slender strip of native grass is 560 feet long and 4 feet wide and stretches the length of a field.

Eveland hopes it will become a permanent home for different species of predacious ground beetles, which devour slugs, aphids and other destructive organisms.

“Things like this just make a lot of sense,” Eveland said, as he pulled weeds from the beetle bank.

“If you’re putting a hotel for them in the middle of the field, they’ll stay,” said Gwendolyn Ellen, head of OSU’s Farmscaping for Beneficials Project.

And that would increase the population of the beneficial insects, she added.

The beetle banks could be helpful for many farmers because as farms get larger in scale natural habitats that act as reservoirs for beneficial creatures are disappearing, said Paul Jepson, an OSU professor and director of the university’s Integrated Plant Protection Center.

Ground beetles search in the soil for their meals, but tilling disturbs the places where they live, and without shelter the insects aren’t going to stay. The beetle bank provides the beetles a protected home, and could also house spiders.

OSU has teamed up with farmers to create other beetle banks in Lebanon, Grants Pass and Portland.

Persephone Farm in Lebanon has a more established beetle bank, and at least five different types of beetles have been found there.

The beetles often are about one centimeter long, but some are as small as the head of a pin.

Gathering Together Farm has invested about $1,000 in the beetle bank.

Eveland also is doing a potato study with OSU, which he said has done an about face in working with organic farmers. OSU’s Ellen agreed.

“In the last five years, Oregon State has gotten a lot better in working with organic farmers. But our project isn’t just for organic farmers,” Ellen said.

Traditional farmers are becoming more interested in pesticide-free and other organic methods to benefit their business, Ellen and Eveland said.

“There’s impetus for conventional growers right now to look at biodiversity,” Ellen said.

Eveland said Growing Together Farms isn’t trying to completely eliminate problem pests.

“We’re trying to get some sort of balance,” he said.

Kyle Odegard covers

Philomath and rural Benton County. He can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.