Summer may be a vibrant season, bursting with flowers, vegetables, and fruits, but it’s also a thriving time for pest growth. Pests, insects, and plant pathogens are every gardener’s nightmare. Along with using strong pesticides, there are other protective measures that you can take to ward off their growth.
With a strong temptation to wipe the nasty pests from your garden, here are the 5 most effective ways.
Use Barriers
Using physical barriers to stop pests from entering the garden fields can help you do away with them for good. There are many barriers like fleece nets, insect nets, and even fruit cage nets to help you protect your plants, fruits, and vegetables.
Place the nets over the plants that are most vulnerable to pest overgrowth, allowing just enough space for the plant to grow freely. Other manual ways include adding a cardboard collar across the plant’s stem and pressing it an inch-deep into the soil.
This method will prevent burrowing insects from eating away the roots and cutworms from damaging the soil of the plants.
Pesticides and Insect Powder
There are many different pesticides to control larvae, ants, wasps, and insects. You can either use spray chemicals that come in liquid form and handheld sprayers. Organic insect killers are a wonderful alternative to harsh chemical pesticides that also end up damaging your plants. They do a very good job of killing unwanted pests and saving your garden from pest damage.
Additionally, you can also sprinkle organic insect powder to permanently do away with mites, fungi, and crawling insects. Insect powders are natural, safe, and odorless, which makes them extremely safe to use on a growing plant field.
Slug Busters
You’ll be surprised to know that many garden pests can easily get trapped in slug busters. While slugs and snails are slightly bigger and therefore easy to capture, slug busters can also catch small insects.
You can set up a beet trap by pouring it in the slug buster. All you have to do after it is wait as it eliminates the nasty creatures.
Ensuring Soil health
This goes without saying, healthy soil will never become susceptible to pest growth. It will naturally be strong enough to grow healthy plants and be more resistant to insects and pests. In case there is a pest presence, strong plants can quickly recover from it compared to plants growing in poor-quality soil.
When your soil receives essential nutrients from maters like compost and manure, it will be less likely to welcome pests and insects.
Crop Rotation
If you repeatedly grow the same plant in the same place every year, your garden will quickly become a pest-house. This is because many pests and insects thrive in the soil of their host plants. Rotating your crops to different places in the garden will help cut down the chances of soil-borne disease organisms.
Crop rotation will also maintain the nutrient balance of your soil. For example, you can plant a few vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes and then follow it up with beans and peas. Maybe in the months after that, you can allow the soil some rest by planting carrots.
Follow these steps to control and permanently put an end to pest growth. For organic pesticides and effective pest control methods, head to Little Fields Farm.
