Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok so, I had this theory, that if a few tobacco plants were scattered throughout the grow beds it might help with controlling pests etc. so in every second grow bed I planted a tobacco plant ( roughly 8 foot spacing between the tobacco plants) and it seems to be working.....really well.
my question is, has anybody else tried this? and if so what were your results?. i haven't done any other form of pest control, the lady beetles have come in by the droves and have taken care of the aphids, the caterpillars have tapered off a bit and the mealy bugs seem to have left the higher reaches of the plants and have dived down to just above the root zones to just above the grow media.
any advances on this would be appreciated.

As far as I was aware it is illegal to grow tobacco in Australia without license? Not sure if it's still current but I think it's still the case? Hopefully someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

Also isn't there issues with tobacco and the Tobacco Mosaic Virus or similar? It can apparently affect tomatoes and cucumbers and some other plants, I'd be concerned there might be some issue relating to that if you were able to grow your own tobacco.

Hmm ok just did a quick Google and apparently there are some ornamental varieties of tobacco as well, I guess they wouldn't be prohibited, but they might be hard to come by. Surely there would be more readily available plants you can use as pest control though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pe ... ing_plants

Sorry, not very helpful I'm sure!

to the best of my knowledge and going off the ato website you can grow tobacco but you just cant harvest it, but its all a bit sketchy the last time I saw it. as for the virus, I never thought of that, it might be best if I just take them out and plant the in pots rather than run the gauntlet with the system, they have only been in there for a few weeks. fingers crossed the damage isn't already done......

There are varieties cultivated strictly as ornamentals. I always saw them recommended for this purpose in dirt gardening.