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You’re excited about your newly planted organic garden. You’ve planned perfectly, done the layout and planting and it has been a thrill to watch the seeds peeking through the soil and small plants getting new leaves. Then one day, as you’re admiring your handiwork, you notice a swarm of tiny insects around your plants and slugs near the bottom leaves. The realities of gardening set in, you have a pest problem.
Since you want to keep the garden organic, you can’t just spray them with a commercial product or can you? Several companies make organic pest control sprays that you might investigate. Or, perhaps you can make a product for natural pest control, such as homemade soap sprays.
Natural Pest Control For Gardens
1. Homemade Soap Spray
2. Beer Traps
On to deal with the slugs.
The soapy mixture might be all that is needed to kill the ones you see, but what about those slugs that enter the garden while you’re not there.
Use this simple but effective trick.
Take small, plastic containers, such as a small chicken salad or cottage cheese containers and bury them in the ground near where the slugs were spotted.
Fill with beer (or any sweetened beverage). The slugs will try to get a drink, fall in and drown. You’ll have to dispose of them, of course, which is not the most fun part of gardening, but at least they’re off your plants.
If you’re not sure which direction the slugs came from, add buried beer containers on either side of the plants. If you like, put them several inches apart and make a line of cracked egg shells between them. Slugs don’t want to slither across sharp objects.
When slugs are gone, further crush the eggshells into the soil. Most plants benefit from the calcium in them.
3. Chickens and Ducks
If your situation and lifestyle allow, get chickens or ducks for active pest control. Mother Earth News lists them as one of the best ways to get rid of slugs and other insect pests.
Yet, most who use this method agree that careful supervision and containment of the fowl is necessary to stop them from eating the garden plants.
If you’re up to the challenge though, ducks and chickens are said to be trainable and achieve long-term control of the slug population. They also get rid of cutworms, beetles, and other harmful bugs.
4. Crop Rotation
As we’ve mentioned here before, changing your planting spots on a regular basis discourages insects and disease. It's one of the simplest means of natural pest management.
Rotating your planting spots controls many root larvae as well as family-specific insects and disease. Crop rotation can be simple; change ground every year or work out a crop specific schedule, allowing a few years between changing where you plant.
5. Diatomaceous Earth
Diatomaceous earth is a valuable tool for controlling pests, especially useful for container planting.
Mix a small amount into your potting soil to keep ants and other creepers away from your containers.
Dust plants with an appropriate type of this product, it works in much the same way as the soap spray mentioned above and dehydrates the exoskeleton of the insect.
Mix it with other soil or use as a thin, top-dressing to control pests. Some gardeners also use cinnamon in this manner, and as a rooting hormone replacement.
Keeping your garden spot free of weeds and plant debris is an essential cultural method to help keep pests and disease way from your garden plot or raised bed.
Seed in flowers and herbs as you go through the garden. Clean up as the season progresses with a thorough clean-up when the gardening season ends for you.
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By Becca Badgett
Becca is a long- time gardener with a passion for growing organically in the vegetable garden and sharing her experience. She believes everyone should grow a herb garden, inground or in containers and use those herbs on a regular basis to improve overall health. Her passion for growing led her to attend a Horticulture Program at a local community college and share what she’s learned with numerous articles on the web. She is certified in Greenhouse Management and Operations, Landscape Design and is licensed as an NC Pest Control professional. Take advantage of her expertise through our gardening articles and get your garden growing. She contributed to the book “How to Grow an Emergency Garden”, available on Amazon. Read it free on Kindle Unlimited