Simple Natural Insect Control

Using natural insect control and organic pest control methods that prevent harmful insects from entering the garden, or deter them, is preferable to having to kill them with insecticide once they have become unmanageable. This article addresses some simple insect control and pest deterrent methods you can use for pest control and pest deterrent to keep your vegetable garden healthy and to keep YOU happy!

Keep Plants Healthy

Diseased plants attract pests more than healthy plants. So work to keep your plants healthy by building up the soil with amendements – organic fertilizer, green manure, mulch and compost.

Sticky Traps

Sticky traps are old fashioned but they still work. They won’t catch all the critters, but they will get some of them, so it is worth a try.

A Clean Garden: Sanitation

Keep rotten fruit out of the vegetable garden. Harvest your vegetables as soon as they are mature. Yellowing, rottening vegetables will attract more pests to your garden than you can handle. Keep weeds out by hoeing, tilling, or hand pulling. Tilling also exposes insects to predation by birds. Weeds and debris are a great hiding place for insects and snakes – not to mention weeds will suck out nutrients from the soil which should be going to your garden plants! To conserve water and prevent “feeding the weeds,” only water directly on your vegetable plants, not wetting the ground nearby.

Don’t Spread Disease and Insects

Clean tools and your hands after you’ve been working with diseased or infested plants to make sure you’re not transmitting it to your other healthy plants. If a plant is too diseased to save, dig it up and take it completely away from the garden. Don’t use it in your compost bins or pile either. If you had a severe problem, consider solarizing your garden for next year when the season is finished. Solarizing means to cover the ground with black plastic. The heat from the sun will act to kill out harmful organisms in the soil.

Other pest control solutions

• Do it yourself soapy spray
• Make do it yourself traps filled with soapy water as a lure – Most people use yellow containers for these.
• Put row covers over your plants / plant collars / cardboard bands
• Put deterrents on the ground around plants such as: aluminum foil, talc powder, red pepper
• Hand picking / shaking plants
• A strong blast of spray from a water hose (but don’t damage your plant)
• Trap Cropping – Planting a crop a pest loves to lure them away from the crop you intend to harvest – Best used by larger operations
• Organic Pesticide
• Organic Gardening / Herb Gardening with Companion Plants
• Cheap Organic Pest Control
• Natural mole deterrent

Biological Control With Predators

In biological control, you introduce natural enemies such as parasites, predators, pathogens or competitors, into the garden environment to get rid of the pest. The method of introducing a predator to control pest populations is now called classical biological control concept. Beneficial insects like lady bugs can be a gardener’s best friend since they consume insect pests. Other predator insects are: spiders and lacewings.