Jessica, I googled chinese evergreen and the photos that came up were different so I think that must a local name used for it. I did some looking around for the first plant and I think it is a weeping red bud. Love red buds so I am sure that is why it caught my eye.
Those carrots are beautiful! I can't wait to grow carrots like those one day!
I have heard about using beneficial sprays similar to LABs on tomatoes before with good results. I also heard comfrey soaked in water and then spray in a dilution on things works well also. I have also heard stories about others who had very healthy soil like Mumsy that grew excellent plants with little to no problems because their plants were so healthy. They didn't need sprays so they didn't kill any beneficial bugs so what bad bugs that came got eaten by the good bugs.
When I began my garden over twenty five years ago, I told my husband that the days of reaching for the poison was over. I wanted my garden to be a peaceable place for humans, mammals, amphibians, birds, insects, and what ever else may come. Live and let live is my motto. Doesn't mean I won't try to kill mites or lice on my chickens with wood ash or Nu Stock but I stopped killing insects of any kind in the garden. The first three years were difficult for my husband and I to watch as bugs, disease, and munchers of all kinds went at it with my lovely plants and trees. We fought the battle with our bare hands. We squished with our fingers, we sprayed with water from the hose, we pruned with loppers and saws. I used companion plantings. And I encouraged birds into my garden. Water features, feed stations, bird houses, and plantings that bore fruit, seed, fir cone, and nut. It worked. By the third year a balance had been reached. The garden became what I dreamed it could become. A sanctuary for all. The deer still make it in sometimes and browse on roses. Rabbits nibble on things still. Slugs may ruin a perfect head of cabbage or lettuce. But this is just the way it is.
My Grandmother always told me to plant in this way using an old farmers almanac rhyme. "One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one for the bunny, and one to grow." I plant enough for all. I fence out the munchers the best I can. I fence newly planted fruit trees and wrap their trunks and I protect fruiting shrubs and roses with netting. I use crop covers to discourage moth worm and I don't loose sleep over any of it.
I love sitting out there and watching garden spiders (little white ones) feast on aphids on the roses. I watch flocks of tweety birds fly through the trees eating insects. I watch swallows sore through the air eating flys and mosquito's. If I'm outside after dark I can see the bats doing the same. Everybody has to eat.
Balance can be achieved. It takes time. It takes hard work. It takes patience. I'm lucky to live in a neighborhood where no one sprays poison so I don't worry about poisonous wind drift. The thick shrubbery on my borders will help with that if neighbors change.
We live in a marvelous age of Internet where knowledge is a click away. For twenty of the last twenty five years, my knowledge came from friends that gardened like me, books and trial by error.
Edited to add: Healthy robust plants very often can out grow and withstand insect and disease when their correct growing conditions are met for them. 90% of seeds and starts in my garden are heritage varieties
