Dealing With Pests In Your Vegetable Garden
Pests, deer, rabbits, mice, and insects all love your fresh, home grown vegetables. And they go a step further, munching on leaves and roots. These creatures not only eat the vegetable but also prevent the plant from producing.
Vigilance is required to keep your vegetable garden free from pests. Combining various methods makes this chore easier.
Good pest control starts even before the vegetables grow, by proper soil preparation, plant selection and watering practice. Maintaining a slightly acidic soil, around pH 6.5 can help. Keeping the soil well fertilized helps the plants grow well, which gives them the needed assistance to fight off pests.
Look for pest resistant seeds. Don’t be afraid of genetically modified seeds, and select only healthy plants if you transplant.
Watch for pests and harmful insects. Chemical sprays, however, are not your first solution. Gardening problems can often be controlled biologically, but you must be knowledgeable about the organisms present in your garden. Some of these organisms actually aid your plants in healthy growth.
Assassin bugs will eat aphids, caterpillars, Japanese beetles and other pests. Stink bugs will feed on potato beetles and some caterpillars. Ladybugs eat aphids, mealybugs and spider mites. These are just a few examples out of dozens.
Watering in the morning will help. It keeps fungus and other problems to a minimum. Just as with grass, vegetables can be prone to growths that are encouraged by nighttime temperatures and excess moisture on the leaves. Allowing the plant to soak up needed water early, then dry before the temperature drops, will help prevent such problems. Keeping them disease free minimizes insect damage, since a weakened plant will often not survive minor infestations. A healhty plant can fight them off.
Alternating the planting of different species will help prevent the spread of pests. Some like one type, others like another. But when many similar plants are spaced close together, that contributes to a population explosion among similar pests. They either reproduce more rapidly, or gather together. Getting rid of a huge population is more difficult, in part because they can devastate a plant before your other efforts take effect.
Just as with animals and humans, pests spread in part by contact. Removing any part or plant that has been infected is not always necessary, but may be your only means of saving other healthy plants if you cannot save the infected plant.
Keep larger animals - rabbits and dear, for example - away from your vegetables by building a fence with a narrows mesh base.
Commercial insecticides can be useful when preventative efforts are not enough. These products are designed to eradicate insect populations and are still safe for human contact and consumption of the vegetables.
Last 5 posts by Dave Truman
- Vegetable Gardening - Planning Your Vegetable Garden - July 18th, 2008
- Planting Vegetables Through All the Seasons - June 26th, 2008
- Dealing With Tomato Problems In Your Vegetable Garden - June 6th, 2008
- Disease Control Tips For Your Vegetable Garden - June 5th, 2008
- How To Fertilize Your Vegetable Garden - May 8th, 2008
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.