Tag Archives: Gardening

Tips For Controlling Garden Pests

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You love to garden. You don’t like the pests that come with it. They can eat up all the vegetables you spent weeks cultivating in a short time. They can infect your garden with diseases that render it unfit for human consumption. Here are some tips to help you control garden pests so you can have a healthier garden.

The first tip is to actively monitor your garden so you identify pest problems early. The most common garden pests are insects, birds, rabbits and weeds. They can do a lot of damage to your garden if they are not detected early enough. The key to early detection is systematically checking your garden for evidence of damage. You should check at least three times a day or more depending on the size of your garden. Take action the moment you detect any pests. The damaging effects they create tend to spread rapidly throughout your garden.

The second tip is to plant strategically so you can attract your pests predators. What type of garden do you want to plant? What pests will likely be attracted to your garden? What predators can do them in? If you know the type of garden you want then you can identify which pests may pose the most problems. The most successful gardeners intersperse their garden with items likely to attract their pests nemesis. For example, if you want to plant vegetables then you may want to plant flowers with them. Your vegetables may attract certain bugs that will damage them so plant flowers that attract other insects that eat them. This is natures way of balancing the food chain and one way you can effectively protect your garden from pests.

The third tip is to use organic pesticides only when other pest control techniques have failed. There are times when you will have to use chemicals to treat major pest problems. A major infestation of various diseases can quickly spread throughout your whole garden living you little choice. This can happen when you do not identify pest problems early. It can also happen if other techniques fail to contain the problems. Organic chemicals may be a better choice because of the potentially damaging long-term side-effects of man made sprays. You should give careful consideration to the type of chemicals you decide to use. Remember to protect your skin when using these products as they can cause serious health effects.

These 3 tips can help you prevent the damage that pests can cause to your garden. Remember that early identification and action is always the best prevention.

Jim Brown’s “Garden Prayer”

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In his garden record book Jim Brown has written this eloquent paragraph as part of a ‘Garden Prayer”: “We know that a garden is a beautiful, sacred place since the days of long ago. Even Thy Son went into the Garden of Gethsemane to offer prayers to Thee. “Be trusting in Thee we know that our labors are not in vain and that our harvest is great.” Not all of us can, or would care to, be Jim Browns, but we can share his pleasure in gardening and his faith in the soil. We can easily be more self-sufficient than we are by growing more of our own food. We can have fun doing it, and without putting in as many hours in the garden as the Browns do. Indeed, many Victory Gardeners whose records I have seen made very creditable gardens by working less than a hundred hours a season. Jim Brown spades his large garden by band. A plowman could do it much more quickly, and in a garden of that size a small garden tractor would probably pay. A wheel hoc will save many hours and much stooping in a garden of any size.

Most homeowners are aware that their lawns and gardens are badly ill need of a face-lifting. Because of the pressure of war work, the shortage of help and materials, as well as the need for food gardens, our grass plots, borders, hedges and trees have been neglected. With emphasis placed on vegetable gardens during the war years, many landowners have had to let decorative planting wait. This year will be the time to spruce up home grounds. If the rock garden has suffered neglect and not enjoyed the solicitous care needed during the years of war, many gardeners will this year introduce new plant dwellers, clean out aliens and beautify the pool, to a point where serious attention is necessary.

Where lawns are thin or deteriorated, fertilization, remaking, new seed and in some cases new top soil are needed. Many shade trees have grown too large, or are full of dead and diseased wood. Pruning will cure this condition if the tree is worth saving, but often the axe may be needed. Privet hedges are often improved by cutting back severely, or by filling in the gaps with new plants. Feeding with a good commercial plant food, manure or compost will work wonders in restoring the health and beauty of neglected plants, if they are not too far gone from disease or malnutrition.