Every gardener has to deal with pests, but you do not need some caustic chemicals to keep your plants standing well outdoors. In organic control, there is more emphasis on cooperation with nature in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem in which the pests are naturally controlled. It is all about prevention, fostering good insects, and taking soft and specific actions in regards to problems (when they come up).
Contents
What actually works to control pests without relying on chemicals on your out-door garden is the following:
1. Healthy Garden Ecosystem
It is true that a healthy offense is the best defense against pests and healthy plants mean a healthy garden and healthy environment.
- Soil Health: Living, rich soil that has many organic materials (compost!), gives way to strong healthy plants. Well grown plants are in a better position to resist the attack of the pests. This can be compared to a healthy immune system in your garden.
- The Right Place and the Right Plant: Select the right kind of plants which fit well in your climate and the kind of sun. Pests are more attracted to stressed plants. Another solution is that where available, one should find disease resistant varieties.
- Diversity of Plants: Do not have big swathes of a single plant. The combination of various plants also puts pests which are host-specific to a particular plant at a disadvantage to expand. It also makes the household more accommodating to favourable insects.
- Crop Rotation Growing vegetables?: Change the location of where you plant the vegetables every year. As an example do not plant tomatoes in the same location two years back to back. This aids in disrupting the life cycle of soil borne pests that may be waiting to feed on their favorite plant.
- Cleanliness: Collect dead leaves and offspring fruit as well as weeds. It may be harboring spots of pests or disease breeding places.
2. Good Bugs (Beneficial Insects)
Actually, there are a lot of insects that are your friends in the garden. They destroy the trouble-making pests! One of the best pest control techniques in use in organic farming is the attracting of these good bugs.
- Grow pollinator-friendly Flowers: Females of many helpful insects such as ladybugs, lacewings, and predatory wasps will be nectar and pollen consumers when they are adults. Plant flowers of different types and which flower in different seasons so that they always get a supply of food. Salutary ones are:
- Dill
- Fennel
- Yarrow
- Sweet Alyssum
- Marigolds (also keep off some insects straight away)
- Cosmos
- Zinnias
- Shelter and Water: Put up structures that the helpful insects can hide in, such as brush piles, rock piles, or thick groundcovers. It is also useful to have a shallow tray of water where pebbles are placed so that they can land on them.
- Stay Away from Chemical Pesticides: It doesn’t matter how mild the chemical pesticide, even the mildest will have a detrimental effect on beneficial insects destroying the natural balance you are attempting to establish.
3. Physical Barriers/ Pull by Hand
There are occasions when best solutions can be the simplest ones.
- Hand-Picking: When dealing with bigger pests such as caterpillars, slugs, snails or beetles, you can just pull them off using your hands. This is supposed to be done at early morning or evening hours when most of the time pests will be active. Put them into a bucket of soapy water to kill them.
- Strong Water Spray: You can blast off soft bodied bugs with a strong stream of water in your hose. This should be done frequently to maintain their population at low levels.
- Row Covers/ Insect Netting: These are simply fine mesh fabrics which are imposed on your plants so physical barriers block the pests and are unable to have access to your plants. Those allow sunlight, air and water in and keep out bugs. They are very good at leafy vegetables and tubers. In case of plants which require pollination (such as tomatoes or squash), you may have to take the covers off during the day when insects are flying and replace them at night.
- Seedling collars: Since this problem is caused by cutworms that bite off young plants at the soil line, you can use a collar (a cardboard piece of toilet paper roll would do) placed around the seedling, pushed an inch or two into the soil.
4. Meaningful Planting (Companion Planting)
There are other plants with natural pest repelling characteristics or plants that are used to attract a beneficial insect when grown adjacent to a specific crop.
- Repellent Plants:
- Marigolds: Has the ability to repel nematodes and whiteflies.
- Alliums (Garlic and Onions): Aphids, Japanese beetles and other insects will avoid the smell. Grow them close to roses, tomatoes or other very susceptible plants.
- Herbs (Basil, Mint, Rosemary, Thyme): A large number of scented herbs can cover up the smell of vegetables thus making them difficult to detect by the pests. Avoid using mint as it may be very aggressive; think about planting it in pots.
- Nasturtiums: They can be used as trapping crop to aphids, and thus they attract them away.
- Trap Cropping: use a decoy-crop, which pests prefer. As an example, nasturtium may attract aphids that will probably prefer them over your beans. You may then take care of the pests in the trap crop or you can just have it sacrifice itself.
5. Use with Care Organic Sprays and Dusts
Although the aim is prevention, you might still need a specific treatment. Even the use of organic sprays should be judicious because even then they might impact in a negative way useful insects in case of its application indiscriminately.
- Neem Oil: This oil is a natural product of neem tree. It is an anti-feed (makes the pests not want to eat) and it interferes with their growth and reproduction. It is helpful in combating aphids, scale, white flies, and spider mites among others. Use it as per the package instructions, most commonly at night to cause no harm to pollinators.
- Insecticidal Soap: Bug banks spray is composed using fatty acids and do not damage the effected insects however, the coating of an exoskeleton of soft bodied insects is dissolved resulting in the insects dehydrating (aphids, mealybugs, and spider mites are affected by this process). The commercial versions are made safe to plants. It is also easy to make a simple homemade one consisting of mild liquid soap and water ( 1-2 teaspoons soap to 1 liter of water). It is always advisable to make a small spray on a sample of the plant.
- Diatomaceous Earth (DE): It is a fine powder that consists of fossilized algae. The sharp particles scratch the bodies of insects having hard skin (such as slugs, beetles, ants), making them dry up and die when they come into contact with it. Apply the food-grade DE using dry plants. Remember, though, that it will also poison the beneficial insects which have hard exoskeletons and that get into contact with it.
- Garlic or Hot pepper spray: These are repellents.
- Garlic Spray: Pureed cloves of garlic using water and strain then dilute and spray. The good odor keeps away pests.
- Hot Pepper spray: mix around water with hot pepper sauce or cayenne powder and small amount of mild soap. The capsacin causes annoyance to the pests.
- These have occasion of burning the leaves; therefore make it a matter of trial, in a small portion of the plant, first.
- Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt): This is a naturally occurring bacteria that has been identified to attack specific caterpillars (such as cabbage worms and tomato hornworms). It is non-lethal to other insects (beneficial or not), only larvae of moths and butterflies are killed. Do not overuse it, particularly when you wish to encourage butterfly populations.
Important Principles of Success
- Walk the garden: Regularly observe the garden to see what is and is not too dry. Memory allows you to detect the pests early and that way, you address a small issue before it escalates into a larger one.
- Step 1: Find Out What Pest You Have: It is really useful to know what sort of pest you have since it can help you select the best organic way to take care of it.
- Have Patience: Sometimes, organic pest controlling would take a lot of time and commitment compared to the use of chemicals. It is more of long term solutions and creating a healthy garden.
- Embrace Minor Destruction: A garden that is organic will possibly have a couple of nibbled leaves or a little pest activity. It is not the aim to have a flawless garden, but a vibrant biosystem.
Following these organic techniques will make your garden outdoors look beautiful and productive and will be beneficial to the local wildlife and environment, as well as your whole family.
