Are bugs like aphids eating your plants? Here's what you can do about it.
Using pesticides to combat pests is simply outdated. But that doesn't mean you have to sit idly by while your plants are eaten or deformed by aphids, beetles, or other critters. Controlling pests in the garden can be environmentally and animal-friendly.
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Pesticides are bad for your garden. They disrupt the natural balance, which will only lead to more pest problems in the long run. It's much better to maintain a healthy garden, one that both respects nature and produces a beautiful garden. So how do you get rid of pests responsibly? Here's what you can do:
The problem: Plants with succulent leaves (such as hostas), seedlings, and young plants with tender leaves are being attacked. Often, only the midrib of the leaf remains intact – this is how hostas can turn into lacework.
The culprits: A whole range of snails, from the larger brown slugs that feed above ground to the small black slugs that target potatoes and plant roots. In calcareous soil, the culprits are usually snails, which can devour an entire plant in a single night. In a summer border, they primarily feast on tobacco plants.
Solutions: Picking snails off by hand is the easiest way. Snails hate bright sunlight and hot, dry weather, so the best time to look for them is in the evening with a flashlight. You can control subterranean snails with nematodes. These are worms that kill the snails.
For the long term, it's best to encourage the natural fauna. Frogs, toads, and hedgehogs eat slugs, and song thrushes feed on snails. In severe cases, introduce plants that snails dislike, for example, with hairy or hard, leathery leaves.
The problem: Plants are weakened, and leaves are deformed, bleached, and covered in sticky honeydew, on which a thick, sooty mold grows. Viral diseases are spread through the mouthparts of sap-sucking insects, which often reside around the plant's growing points.
The culprits: Aphids (green and black), mealy bugs , scale insects, whiteflies (small, white bugs on the underside of leaves) and spider mites (yellow, green or red mites the size of a pinprick) are all to blame.
Solutions: Discourage spider mites by keeping the air in the greenhouse (or living room) moist. You can also control all greenhouse pests with predatory insects. Use the appropriate species for each pest, for example, bronze wasps for whiteflies or predatory mites for red spider mites.
You can catch whiteflies with sticky strips, and you can rinse scale insects and mealybugs off with a mild soap solution. Aphids can easily be sprayed away with a strong jet of water. And don't forget to attract birds, ladybugs , and wasps to your garden. They love to eat these little creatures.
The problem: Plants that appear healthy gradually weaken or suddenly wither and die. Upon closer inspection, you discover that the roots have been eaten away.
The culprits: Carrot flies bore into carrots, and cabbage flies eat the roots of cabbage plants. The roots of various potted plants, such as cyclamen, and some garden plants are victims of the larvae of the yew weevil (photo).
Solutions: Place cabbage collars around young cabbage varieties during planting. This prevents cabbage root fly from laying eggs on the soil near the plants.
Sow carrots thinly to avoid having to thin the seedlings, as the resulting odor attracts carrot flies. Sow spring onions next to carrots, as the onion smell confuses carrot flies. Finally, cover carrot rows with crop protection netting.
When repotting, check the roots of your plants for yew weevil larvae and remove them by hand. Nematodes are also available to control these garden pests.
The problem: Leaves are eaten, shredded or rolled up.
The culprits: Larvae of all kinds of butterflies , flies and moths: from the caterpillars of large and small cabbage whites on cabbage varieties and nasturtiums to the larvae of leafrollers and sawflies on roses and fruit trees.
Solutions: Removing them by hand is easiest, but you can also install bird feeders and nesting boxes to increase the number of garden birds and other natural predators. Netting will keep your cabbages free of cabbage white moths. Moths that damage apples and pears can be caught with pheromone traps hung in trees. Or even better: let the wasps eat the caterpillars!
The problem: Leaves and flowers are eaten by insects with mouthparts that bite instead of suck.
The culprits: Lily beetles attack lily leaves and flowers, earwigs eat dahlia flowers and various other beetles devour a range of plants including rosemary , mint and snowball .
The solutions: These creatures have tough shells and are incredibly fast. Catch earwigs in straw-filled flowerpots , which you hang upside down on sticks around dahlias . You can grab lily beetles between your thumb and index finger (if you're quick enough) and spray their larvae away with a strong jet of water.
Other beetles are more difficult to control, but well-fed, growing plants that are not lacking in light or water are often strong enough to fend off attacks themselves.
The problem: Plants are being eaten above or below ground, and the damage is often acute and severe. Sometimes entire plants disappear.
The culprits: Mice, rabbits, moles and birds.
The solutions: Mice can wipe out an entire harvest in a single night. You can trap them, but traps have to be set constantly. And birds of prey are excellent pest controllers, but most of us won't have a suitable spot for an owl box or kestrels. What you can do is plant (ornamental) onions or garlic . Mice don't like their smell, so that keeps them at bay.
You can keep rabbits out of your (vegetable) garden with a chicken wire fence that you bury 45 cm into the ground.
Discourage moles by immediately covering their molehills. Moles also dislike the scent of certain plants, such as Helleborus and Crown Imperial ( Fritillaria imperialis ). They also dislike garlic.
You only need to keep birds away from specific plants. For example, netting can prevent them from eating your strawberries or currants before you can harvest them. Be careful not to trap birds in your netting, for example, by choosing blue netting (they avoid it) and by pulling it tight. Or try growing white strawberries : birds' red color signals ripeness, so they'll leave white strawberries alone.
This article was written by the independent editors of Gardeners' World. It contains sponsored links, and we receive compensation for these links. This allows us to continue providing you with the best gardening tips and step-by-step instructions so your garden looks beautiful all year round.
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