How to Fight Garden Pests Naturally
During the heat of summer, our gardens explode with color, blooms, vegetables, and berries. But the hot weather is also the peak time for pests. While it’s impossible to get rid of every insect and animal that’s eyeing your award-winning tomatoes and peonies, you can take a few steps to safeguard your garden and flower beds.
Know the Difference Between Pests and Good Insects
Pests are animals and insects that come along and do harm to your plants. They thrive in unhealthy environments. To establish a healthy garden, start with research and figure out what pest or insect you are fighting.
Note: For insects to thrive, they need an environment that is conducive to their lifestyle. But horticulturist, Mark Highland, reminds us that for every bad insect there is a good one who will often eat it. That’s great news!
Learn How to Attract Good Insects
To decrease disease on your plants and in your soil and to get rid of pests, good insects are your best friend. Finding ways to attract them without harmful chemical use is important. We suggest attracting lady beetles, praying mantises, dragonflies, and spiders. These insects will make a difference in your garden.
To attract these types of insects make sure to:
- Provide a water source.
- Plant flowers that attract good insects. (Examples: Alfalfa, Buenos Aires verbena, Bishop's flower, coriander/cilantro, Queen Anne's Lace, sunflower, sweet clover, tansy, wild mustard, yarrow, and yellow rocket)
Be Watchful for Signs of Trouble
In order to spot an animal or an insect’s pattern, be out in your garden every day. We suggest paying close attention to …
- Leaves—look for curling, mottling, discolored, spotted, or blistered leaves. This could be a sign of microorganisms or disease.
- Soil—look for animal tracks, fur, or droppings.
- Remove weeds—this will give you visibility so you can quickly notice any changes.
Use Barriers As Opposed to Harmful Chemicals
Barriers are an excellent way to practically keep animals, both small and large, out of your garden. To create a barrier, use mesh fencing along the sides. Know the size of the animals you are trying to keep out—that way you can choose the correct mesh.
If birds are the problem, suspend one-inch mesh over the top of your garden. Make sure to give some distance between the tops of the plants and the mesh overhead.
The Best Way to Attract Good Insects... Add Life to the Soil
Pro Tip: creating a healthy environment for good insects to thrive will ultimately drive out the bad ones. It's called competitive exclusion.
It's all about creating a healthy, happy, and resilient environment in your garden, and AgriGro’s products help you do just that by supporting the good insects and biological life while enhancing their strength. When you use life-enhancing products, you're improving the environment and promoting healthy organisms and microbes to do the job nature intended them to do. When good insects are naturally attracted to your garden, flower beds, and land—you'll notice pests and disease decrease.
At the end of the day, many hands make light work—having an abundance of beneficial microbes in the soil at critical stages throughout the growing season is like having extra hands on the farm to fight off disease and pests.
Plants and microbes have a mutually beneficial relationship—plants feed microbes and microbes feed plants. It's known as the Symbiotic Cycle. The benefits they provide when their relationship is protected and cultivated include better root development and plant structure, increased nutrient and water uptake, improved plant health and immune system function, and better stress tolerance.
By applying AgriGro's® Home products, you're feeding the soil and plant powerful biomolecules that supercharge the symbiotic cycle, increasing nature's beneficial microbial populations up to 5,000%. In return, this explosion in beneficial microbes provides the plant with essential nutrients, growth regulators, antibiotics, enzymes, and amino acids while breaking down applied fertilizers and releasing tied up nutrients already in the soil. This process drives plant growth and improves soil and plant health to maximize what nature has already provided. Giving you the natural solution for a green thumb!
Learn more to protect your home grown fruits and vegetables naturally and sustainably.
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