5 Easy Steps to Organic Garden Pest Control
One of the best things about having an organic garden is that you get to fight the unavoidable garden pests without all these nasty strong chemicals. These chemicals harm every living thing, including plants, good bugs (yes there are plenty!), your soil and you and your family, as well as accumulating and trickling down into the ground water.
However, all these toxins are not only forbidden in your organic garden (or otherwise it will not be an organic garden!), they are also totally unnecessary since there are plenty of alternatives to use that work just fine, and that don’t put your family’s as well as everybody else’s health at risk. Check it all out!
Organic Garden Pest Control 1: Manual removal
This is by far the easiest and cheapest way, but not applicable to all kinds of pests. Go out into your garden in the early morning and in the evening, and pick by hand all the bugs you can see eating away on your precious plants, like for example aphids and lily beetles. Squash them or put them in a container with soapy water.
Organic Garden Pest Control 2: Soapy water
Bugs will suffocate when covered in soapy water, so a simple solution of 1 dl of natural soap added to 1 liter of water will do the trick. Spray your plants every other day for a week or two with a spray bottle to get rid of all the bugs that hatch. Make sure you spray the whole plant, even under the leaves.
Insecticidal soap, ready-to-use, can also be bought (see bottom of page). These are generally more efficient because they stay on the leaves better than the homemade stuff, and are fairly cheap.
Aphids are easily removed by this, but sometimes spider mites are slightly harder to get rid off.
A stronger remedy is this: Put 2-3 garlic cloves, a few large hot chili peppers and 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in a blender and mix well, then strain the mixture. Add 1 tablespoon natural soap or dishwashing soap (may get bubbly!) and 1 liter of water and mix well once more. Pour into spray bottle and spray frequently, though not during mid day or in really hot and sunny weather, as this can burn the leaves of your plants.
This scares away most animal pests in your garden, even mice and moles if you spray near their holes. (Moles can also be effectivelly scared off with a sonic repellant, see below.)
There is one major back draw with both of these remedies though: They will get rid of the good insects as well, which leads us to
Organic Garden Pest Control 3: Call in the good guys
This is an extremly environmentally friendly way to control the pests in your organic garden, using the “good” bugs to prevent the ones harmful to your plants from expanding. You can tempt for example ladybugs, lacewings and the praying mantis into your garden by growing plants that they like and are drawn to, or use special lures (see bottom of page) that attract these beneficial insects to your garden. These little fellows are all good at devouring aphids and to some extent spider mites (and are pretty to watch!), and can also be bought from firms delivering them as egg sacks or live.
Organic Garden Pest Control 4: Choosing scary plants and maintaining good plant health
Note, the plants are supposed to be scary for the pests, not for you! Good plants for this are wormwood, lavender, marigolds, garlic and onions. I believe all of these are easily fitted into both your flower garden and your vegetable garden. For example, onions can be planted amongst carrot plants to prevent the carrot root fly from harming your carrots (companion planting), and marigolds can be planted anywhere!
Make sure your plants grow in healthy soil, rich in nutrients, in order to keep them vigorous and strong. By doing that your plants will be able to flourish even if they are attacked by one pest or another.
Organic Garden Pest Control 5: Killing ants, slugs, fleas, beetles and many other crawling insects
Diatomaceous earth (see bottom of page) works through piercing the exoskeleton of these creatures, causing them to dry out. Lightly coat a thin layer on the ground where ever you have a problem, repeat when necessary, for example after watering or after heavy rain.
Hollyhock saviour! Many are the gardeners giving up on hollyhocks because of the fungus that makes the leaves turn reddish brown and eventually fall of. However, if you use this homemade solution your hollyhocks will be able to keep their leaves and look the way they should.
Horsetail, enough to fill a kettle and covered with water, should boil for a minimum of 10 minutes. Having done that, filter the contents of the kettle, dilute the fluid with 5-10 times of water. This homemade remedy is to be sprayed all over on your hollyhocks and under the leaves.
I wish you good luck in keeping a heatlhy and beautiful garden!
