10 Easy Ideas for Organic Pest Control
Why is it important to make any effort at organic pest control when there are so many insecticides and traps that work just as well? The basic reason is that insecticides do not degrade naturally in the environment, and it means that you are spraying poison on the food products that your family is going to be eating at harvest time.
Additionally, conventional insecticides are not selective in the pests that they control. This means that …
Your Beneficial Insect Army – We Salute You!
You might have heard a lot about beneficial insects in your garden, and how they fight on your side to keep your flowers, shrubs and vegetables safe. Well, it’s time to meet these tireless, hungry soldiers, how to attract and keep them in your garden, and the pros and cons of using them as your organic insecticide. And how effective are they, really?
Introducing Your Garden Soldiers
If you are an organic gardener, chances are you will …
Planning a Habitat Garden: North and South
The problem about giving gardening advice on a website that is not region-specific, is that every piece of advice has to be replicated in duplicate or triplicate for it to be useful. That is just fine! Repeating the same advice for three or four climate zones will help with our “Natural Search.” (Ha ha! Another pun! I am bad with the …
Habitat Gardens: Happy Meals and a Home for Garden Critters
“Invite animals into my garden? I don’t THINK so!” I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that from many serious gardeners if asked whether they welcome or shoo away insects, small mammals, birds and other animals to their gardens. Yes, deer herds indiscriminately ripping baby lettuces out of the vegetable garden, and cheerfully eating hostas and stripping arborvitae of their leaves is maddening. …
Organic Ant Control
Photo by Il conte di LunaAnts are part of the garden. They help decompose organic material. They can also bite, sting and devour a wood frame house. If you have a couple ant colonies and they are doing no harm, leave them be. Think of them as nature’s cleaning maids. However, if ants take …
Buying Healthy Plants To Avoid Problems
Every minute of every day, the plants in your yard are defending themselves from their natural enemies. When a gust of wind breaks a tree branch, chemicals concentrated at the base of the plant mobilize into a protective wall to prevent pests from invading the healthy parts of the tree.
A shrub that is being attacked by insects nibbling on its leaves will respond by changing its leaf chemistry, …
Good and Bad Bugs.
 Organic gardeners divide the insect world into two camps:
 good bugs and bad bugs
 The bad bugs bring death, disease, and destruction,
they suck the life out of plants, infest
the soil and lay eggs by the thousands.
The good bugs remind me of an army of
peacekeepers, who come marching in bringing
peace and harmony.
They work quietly, taking care of the bad bugs
by munching on them and generally getting
rid of your enemies for you.
Now, you would think that bad bugs would
look horrible and good ones would be pretty
but that is not always the case i.e
A ground beetle, which eats slugs, is distinguished
from a darkling beetle, which eats plants,
by a ridge on its head from which the
ground beetle’s antennae protrude.
Natural Repellents
BANANA PEELS placed around roses and other plants bothered by aphids, make a natural repellent and will make the pests disappear. Why this is I do not know, but I have tried it very successfully.
Keep putting the peel around the base of the plants as long as the aphids are present. As an added bonus, the potassium in the banana skin stimulates larger blooms.
CITRUS RINDS as a natural repellent have a …
