Implementing Organic Pest Management (OPM)

The key word here is management. The goal is not to destroy every living creature except your garden plants. OPM emphasizes creating a diverse ecosystem where pest problems are regulated naturally, relying heavily on cultural controls. These steps, which make your garden less hospitable to pests, include crop rotation, choosing disease-resistant cultivars, and ruthlessly eliminating any disease- or insect-infested plant material from your garden.

Good Housekeeping

The basis of any good garden is good soil and healthy plants. For a successful food garden, in particular, full sun or almost full sun, good drainage and sufficient water are critical factors. The better the site, the fewer problems there will be to deal with later. By incorporating organic matter such as dead autumn leaves and mulch into your vegetable garden every season, you will continue to enrich and improve the soil. Better soil means healthier crops, and strong plants are more resistant to insects and diseases. They also compete better with weeds.

Selecting Plants

Select healthy-looking plants that are suited to your local growing conditions. Small local seed catalogs and nurseries may specialize in cultivars that are already adapted to the area. All-American Selections (AAS) have been selected for their ability to thrive in a wide range of conditions; look for the AAS shield on seed packets. Buy certified disease-free plants and seeds from reputable distributors whenever possible. If in doubt about a plant, don’t buy it.

Some plants have an inbred natural resistance to specific diseases, such as Verticillium-resistant tomatoes. Choose plants or cultivars that are less attractive to problem pests. Aphids prefer green-leaved squashes to silver-leaved ones, for example. For animal pests like deer or birds, avoid crops that will require constant vigilance to keep them protected.

Crop Rotation

It can be a hassle, especially when you start using intensive gardening techniques like succession planting, but crop rotation disrupts soil-dwelling insect and disease cycles. By moving the crops around, it’s harder for the pests to find their hosts. Another option is to mix crops with similar growing needs together. Pests can’t simply move from one plant to the next, then, but must again go searching for a specific host plant for their supper.

Beneficial Organisms

Introducing or encouraging beneficial microorganisms, nematodes, insects, birds and animals in your garden offers a variety of means to control a wide array of harmful pests. With a little research, you can tailor your approach according to the kinds of pests you encounter. Encouraging beneficial insects, birds and animals to take up residence in your garden is largely a matter of providing sources of food, shelter and water to make them feel safe and welcome.

Repellents, Barriers and Traps

Insects and animals have flavor preferences just like humans. By making your plants smell or taste yucky to them, it encourages them to munch on someone else’s garden. You can find recipes for homemade repellents online, using common substances like garlic and red pepper. Birds and animals can also be scared off by sights and sounds. You can buy or make your own devices; just be sure to move them around every couple of days, or they lose their effectiveness.

Barriers are meant to keep pests away from your plants. Scattering crushed eggshells around your plants keeps soft-bodied pests like slugs and snails away by scratching their skin open so they dehydrate. Copper strips serve the same purpose by shocking them. Cutworm collars prevent crawling insects from being able to reach plant stems. Floating row covers keep flying insects and birds away from growing crops. Fences and netting are the best protection against animal and bird invaders.

Traps come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Traps usually have two components; a lure that uses sight (color, shape, light) or smell (food or sex pheromone) and a detaining device such as a sticky surface, one-way entrance, and triggered doors or killing mechanisms. The kind of trap you use will depend on the kind of pest you want to eliminate.

Physical Pesticides

These aren’t necessarily as poisonous as they sound. Soap and water make dandy pesticides, for example. A strong spray of water can knock pests off of plants and even damage them. Boiling water is an effective weed-killer for small areas. Soap washes off insects’ protective coatings so they dehydrate. Oil smothers them. Hydrogen peroxide burns fungal spores. Take care when using physical pesticides, because some of them can harm non-targeted organisms or yourself. Garden lime, for example, can burn your skin and is harmful if inhaled.

Weeds

Weeding can be very labor-intensive, but there is usually little help for that. They need to be pulled by hand or cut off at the roots by hoes in established beds. You can cut down on the number of weed seeds that germinate by using mulch to shade your garden beds and deprive them of needed light. Soil solarization is a variation on this theme that is useful for areas that you want to begin to cultivate. Sheets of clear plastic trap heat underneath, cooking the soil until everything under the plastic is killed. This process takes several weeks and only works in hot, clear weather. Sometimes the most difficult problem is simply identifying which plants are weeds, and which are not.

By employing OPM methods in your home garden, you can come to a peaceful co-existence with garden pests without having to resort to toxic measures that can harm beneficial organisms, the Earth, or yourself.