Natural Remedies For Garden Pests
It may seem like you can never get rid of the pests in your garden. However, you don’t need to resort to chemicals if you want to get rid of pests on your flowers and vegetables. There are many natural remedies for pest control, which are much less harmful to your garden environment than poisonous Pests and Pesticides. Natural remedies are much safer for wildlife, as well as your pets and children. Plus, it costs less than store-bought pesticides.
Every year, over 136 million pounds of pesticides are dumped on lawns and gardens or used inside the home. This is three times as much as farmers use. A lot of the contamination from pesticides actually comes from homes, not large-scale farms. If you’re looking for an environmentally way to control the insects in your garden, consider natural remedies that are much gentler. Here are a few remedies you can use instead of adding more chemicals to the soil:
Make sure your garden is healthy, to begin with. Start with well-prepared soil that has excellent drainage and air circulation, with compost to provide nutrients for your plants. To encourage healthy plants, you should also keep your garden mulched, and add compost frequently.
After planting your garden, be sure to remove any weak plants, disposing of them well away from your garden. Weeds, discarded plants, and compost should not be kept near your garden if you want to keep pests away. Your garden should also be kept free of any other debris where insects or other Pests and Pesticides may feed or breed.
One natural remedy you can try is seaweed fertilizer spray. It contains minerals and other elements, like iron, zinc, calcium, sulfur, barium, and magnesium. These strengthen the soil and help your plants thrive. If your plants are growing well, they will be better able to resist pests.
You can also keep pests away by considering how you are planting your garden. Mix plants up, instead of planting areas of certain species. This will make it much harder for insects to spread between plants. Rotate plants year by year, and you will be able to get rid of insects that feed on specific plants.
Also, be sure to water your plants early in the day. This will give the leaves time to dry out, which is important because if your leaves are wet as night falls, insects and fungi may move in.
If, despite your best efforts, several of your plants become infected, be sure to remove them as soon as you see them. Before using your gardening tools near healthy plants, you should disinfect them, just like a doctor would. This will keep the pests or infection from spreading.
One way to keep harmful insects at bay is by attracting beneficial insects. If you can’t seem to attract them, you can actually buy several species from catalogs. Arachnids, Chalcids, ladybugs, praying mantises, hoverflies, and some species of wasps can all help keep pests at bay. These, in addition to air-purifying indoor plants, are powerful allies in your fight against garden pests!
If your goal is to grow a healthy and beautiful garden while maintaining clean air in your surroundings, try to keep pests at bay using natural pesticides. You can learn more about natural pesticides on the internet, or at your local gardening store. There are many different options available, so once you determine which plant is being invaded by which pest, there should be a natural remedy to help you restore your garden to its original beauty!
Much stronger pests: Now, there could nothing be as much convincing as this, according to which, there are many of those pests which don’t really get affected by these pesticides kind of thing and thus becoming really strong with every passing day. Well, obviously they cannot really resist being eaten by a good bug.
Now, getting over the knowledge of reasons for which one must go for adding beneficial insects, there are also some things which are important to look over:
Permits: Do not forget to ask for permits and regulation so as to add these beneficial insects in your garden, as there are sometimes such rules which dint allow such things to happen.
Include others too: Now, as you are planning over to add these beneficial insects in your garden, in order to protect your vegetation, it is also important that you make your surroundings know about the same. Tell them about the benefits, so that they can also move over to add insects and restrict the use of any kind of pesticides.
Best Environment: As already mentioned above these pests needs that suitable environment to stay in and so it is important for you to get it settled all according to their needs which wouldn’t make them go away. So, the most important thing to look over is that the population of pests in your garden must range from being low to medium.
Now, moving over, here is the information of 14 insects which can prove out to be beneficial for one’s garden and thus make it pest resistant. This would also make you learn about the kind of pests that they attack and also the kind of habitat which attracts that particular type of insect.
1. Ladybugs:
Hunts over: mites, whitefly, aphids, Colorado potato beetle
Attracted by: Common Yarrow, Basket of Gold, Dandelion, Dill and Fern-leaf Yellow
It is been said that this insect actually consumes around the number of 5000 aphids in the whole of its lifetime.
2. Predatory Mites:
Hunts over: Spider Mites
Attracted by: Environments which are mostly humid such as those high tunnels
These are the insects that are believed to feed in pollen and not on the plants itself while being at that time span of unavailability of hunts.
3. Mealybug Destroyer:
Hunts over: Mealybugs
Attracted by: Sunflower, angelica, fennel, dill
These are the insects which are believed to consume at least 250 mealybug larvae
4. Praying Mantis:
Hunts over: Crickets, moths, beetles, caterpillars
Attracted by: cosmos, marigolds, large bushes
The weird fact about this insect is that they can turn their hand at 180 degrees to have a view over their surroundings.
5. Hoverflies:
Hunts over: scale insects, caterpillars, aphids
Attracted by: Common Yarrow, Fern-leaf Yarrow, Basket of Gold
It is been said that the larvae of these insects feed on pests and the adult insects on pollens.
6. Tachinid Flies:
Hunts over: Squash bugs, cutworms, gypsy worms
Attracted by: Dill, Coriander, Carrots
They are believed to exploit pests by laying their eggs onto the host.
7. Spiders:
Hunts over: Caterpillars, Grasshoppers, bed bugs, fruit flies
Attracted by: Plants which are taller especially for those weaving spiders
Many of the spiders are believed to complete their whole of the life span in one complete year only.
8. Ground Beetles:
Hunts over: Cutworms, caterpillars, Colorado potato beetles
Attracted by: Clover, Amaranthus, evening primrose
They are at most said to be active only at the time of night.
9. Aphid Midges:
Hunts over: aphids
Attracted by: Source of water, dills, plants with pollen
These insects can actually attack those 60 different kinds of species of aphids.
10. Braconid Wasps:
Hunts over: Caterpillars, aphids, tomato hornworm
Attracted by: Parsley, Lemon Balm, Common Yarrow
They destroy hornworms by laying their eggs inside the caterpillar.
11. Damsel Bugs:
Hunts over: Potato beetles, Aphids, mites
Attracted by: Spearmint, Alfalfa, fennel
These insects if provided a suitable environment can get their population increased.
12. Green Lacewings:
Hunts over: mealybugs, leafhopper, whitefly
Attracted by: Dill, Coriander, Dandelion, Angelica
It makes it easy to get rid of soft-bodied pests.
13. Minute Pirate Bugs:
Hunts over: Aphids, Caterpillars, Insect eggs, spider mites
Attracted by: Spearmint, alfalfa, fennel, caraway
These are the insects whose both stages of immature and adult hunts on many of those small insects.
14. Soldier beetles:
Hunts over: Aphids, Soft-bodied insects
Attracted by: Marigold, zinnia, linden trees
The important fact about these insects is they are harmless to people but do not cause any damage to plants.
So, mentioned above are the insects which one should look over while getting beneficial ones in their garden. And now it is the time to select those which are suitable according to your area’s environmental conditions.
Also, See The 10 Best Fertilizer for Vegetable Garden – 2024 Buying Guide
