Who invited these pests to my vegetable garden?

Carolyn Saft Contributor I was first drawn to vegetable gardening with the wish of getting a bit closer to self-sustainability and improving my eating habits. I tried growing things from seeds and failed very quickly. I bought bigger plants and had better luck. However, as I watched from a distance how my tomato and pepper plants started to flower, and tiny fruits started to develop, unwelcome guests began eating my plants away. Naturally, I looked online for answers. One of the sources I read said that "the vegetable plant's best fertilizer is the farmer's footsteps." This stuck with me because it was an elegant way of saying that a grower – no matter what their production scale –