There’s nothing worse than starting a beautiful vegetable garden, only to have pests come in and eat it all up! Luckily, if you know a few key tips and tricks, you can keep your tasty veggies safe from critters and let your garden thrive all season long! Check out these 7 Tricks For Fighting Garden Pests!
7 Tricks For Fighting Garden Pests
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1. Row covers can help protect your plants from being eaten and destroyed! Row covers are best for baby plants and plants that do not need pollination. The lightweight fabric of row covers puts a barrier between your plants and outside pests like bugs and rabbits. Almost all plants can be covered with row covers while they are new and vulnerable, allowing them to get strong and hold up to invading pests.
2. Bird netting can be used to protect your crop from birds looking for a snack. Birds are known for stealing ripe berries and tomatoes from your garden. Bird netting does not prevent pollination of your garden and can be left over your plants until harvest.
3. Rotate crops each year to help prevent diseases from killing your plants. By rotating your crops you reduce the chance of anything the last crop had spreading to the new crop and contaminating it. Also, when rotating crops you allow the soil to recuperate and the nutrients to balance out. Planting things like beans every other year will help keep the soil fertile. So not only will you be fighting garden pests, but you’ll also ensure that you have good soil!
4. Insecticidal soaps are great for fighting aphids when they take over your garden! You can make your own with a spray bottle and 1/4 teaspoon Original Dawn dish soap into 2 cups of water. As the sun goes down, spray the entirety of each affected plant, being careful to get all of each leaf. Repeat each night until the aphids have gone. You need to do this at night to allow the mixture to evaporate before the sun rises to burn the leaves.
5. Check plants daily and hand pick caterpillars, also known as hornworms, when they appear. Being proactive can keep them from taking over your garden and destroying it seemingly overnight! The best way to get rid of hornworms is to squish them. Planting dill and marigolds around tomatoes will help keep reduce the hornworm population.
6. Companion planting also allows you to protect your garden from pests and disease. Planting basil and oregano with your tomatoes and peppers will help keep them safe from bugs and rabbits that love to munch! If you’re fighting garden pests, this not only will help with your pest problem, but it’ll also give you some tasty herbs to harvest!
7. Put up a bug house to invite good bugs into your garden. Parasitic wasps and ladybugs will keep the most common bugs that eat your garden under control. By giving those kinds of insects a nice bug house to stay in, you increase the chance of them protecting your garden from other bugs!
What do you do to control garden pests?
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