Cultivate as diverse an ecosystem as you possibly can. Good indicator species include amphibians (esp. frogs), spiders and fungi -- if you're seeing lots of those in your veggie garden, your soil ecology and fixed-plant guilds are healthy.
I had a neighbour complain that they'd had a particularly bad invasion of bugs one season, despite a couple of prior seasons with no trouble. "Third season growing in that spot?" I asked. She answered affirmatively. "Hang in there," was the only advice I could give. It seems that a new veggie garden gets about 2 seasons "for free", then, in the 3rd season, all the bugs find it, but the predators haven't caught up yet. It's highly instructive to run a predator-prey model -- you'll easily see the natural delay between prey population peaks and the lagging predator population peaks. So 3rd season is a downer, but take heart! from there on things steadily get better.
The BIG thing to avoid (assuming you're aiming for completely pesticide-free) is to NEVER use pesticides of ANY kind, "organic" pesticides included! The moment you deploy a pesticide, even on a limited scale, you break the predator-prey networks you need to build and foster. Once you have your local ecosystem really healthy (compost, compost, compost!) you'll hardly ever have serious pest problems. I speak from having gardened this way for over 25 years.
Cultivate as diverse an ecosystem as you possibly can. Good indicator species include amphibians (esp. frogs), spiders and fungi -- if you're seeing lots of those in your veggie garden, your soil ecology and fixed-plant guilds are healthy.
I had a neighbour complain that they'd had a particularly bad invasion of bugs one season, despite a couple of prior seasons with no trouble. "Third season growing in that spot?" I asked. She answered affirmatively. "Hang in there," was the only advice I could give. It seems that a new veggie garden gets about 2 seasons "for free", then, in the 3rd season, all the bugs find it, but the predators haven't caught up yet. It's highly instructive to run a predator-prey model -- you'll easily see the natural delay between prey population peaks and the lagging predator population peaks. So 3rd season is a downer, but take heart! from there on things steadily get better.
The BIG thing to avoid (assuming you're aiming for completely pesticide-free) is to NEVER use pesticides of ANY kind, "organic" pesticides included! The moment you deploy a pesticide, even on a limited scale, you break the predator-prey networks you need to build and foster. Once you have your local ecosystem really healthy (compost, compost, compost!) you'll hardly ever have serious pest problems. I speak from having gardened this way for over 25 years.