Insects and Your Garden

Controlling Insects in your Garden:

When you feel a mound of unwanted insects have entered into your garden and it is becoming a good for nothing insect breeding ground what are you going to do? Are you going to go a purchase a bottle of pesticide at the nearest store, or maybe you have some pesticide in the garage that you have used before? STOP! Using a pesticide is not the right way of getting rid of your unwanted insects. If you use a pesticide to kill the bugs in your garden you are not only going to kill the insects you want to kill but also the insects that were helping your garden in the first place. Bugs like ladybugs and green lace wigs are beneficial to your garden; they eat the insects that you are trying to kill like aphids and many, many others. Most gardening shops sell batches of lady bugs that you can buy and set loose in your garden, you will see results almost immediately, and plus ladybugs are said to bring good luck.

Using pesticides would work well and be fine if they didn’t kill everything and contaminate your gardens soil for years to come. The things you are growing in your garden are sucking up nutrients from the soil and by doing so they are sucking up those pesticides you put down. Even worse if you eat from your garden, which is one of the reasons of having a garden, you are putting the pesticides in you! And those bugs that were eating on your garden, well the birds eat those, and the birds are now facing an epidemic of thinning eggshells that are cracking before the baby is even formed.

You can get rid of unwanted insects by doing things naturally and it is just as effective as those pesticides without all the harmful risks.

Some simple things you can do are:

• Planting tobacco on the perimeter of you garden discourages aphids and other unwanted pest from even venturing into your prized garden.
• Another thing to do is to plant sunflowers and get a bird bath to make them come to your garden they will eat the insects and pest that you don’t want.
• Planting other plants like garlic, onion and chives will ensure that no aphid or likewise will come foraging in your garden, but if you don’t want to plant them and wait for them to grow, get an empty spray bottle and put garlic, onion, cayenne pepper, and water, let it sit for about an hour and then spray your garden.
• If your garden is really infested put some gloves on and hand pick the aphids and other insects off the foliage, then gently remove with clippers the infected foliage or area and then spray the mixture above to keep them from coming back.
• Learn about the insects and what they do and what they don’t like, this is really easy and if you know what you’re fighting you can fight them back.

Just remember that by using pesticides you are harming not only the environment but yourself and the ones you love. Also you are supporting pesticides by purchasing them, which is keeping them on the shelves so that everyone can buy them and contaminate their soil, their gardens, and the life that thrives in both.