A few years ago ‘Mighty’ Quinn Peterson joined us here at It’s About Thyme from Texas A&M. We were in the midst of a particularly serious infestation of aphids and white flies following the torrential rains of the spring. Quinn advised us to place small tobacco plants at the entrances of the greenhouses.

He germinated the minute seeds himself, and in a few weeks we had some fairly good sized plants . . . which immediately became full of ‘bad bugs.’  This was pr...