Protect the harvest you have been nurturing from chewing insects.
Cover-up – Create a physical barrier by covering leafy vegetables with a fine weave vegetable netting. Sometimes you need to protect only one plant or row of plants. A cloche is a temporary cover, sized and shaped to fit a particular plant.
For single plants, make inexpensive cloches by removing the bottom of a 2L plastic milk bottle and setting them over the young plants. Cloches can create heat buildup on sunny days. Make sure you remove or vent the cloches, so they don’t overheat your plants.
Bring in the beneficial insects, birds and reptiles – grow flowering plants near your veggie patch which will encourage beneficial insects and birds to inhabit your garden and chew on the bad bugs. Most common types of beneficial insects found in gardens include ladybirds and lacewings which feed on aphids, small caterpillars, and moth eggs. Spiders and wasps hunt out citrus leaf miner and aphids.
Delay planting out seedlings from trays until they are a little bigger. Chewing pests love young fresh leaves – same as us.
Try to identify what is munching on your leaves. Time for a night stake out. Many pests come out freely at night. So don on your head torch and bust the myth. If you have snails and slugs on the march in your garden, sprinkle Searles Snail & Slug Pellets on the soil. It contains a child and pet deterrent so only the slimy bugs eat it.