Home Garden Tips - Garden Pests

What to do about Garden Pests?
While tending to my own garden, I have found that one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a gardener is to walk outside to check on your plants. It's just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine only hours before. The explanations for some of these plant-destroying holes are garden pests. Some of the main Garden Pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars, birds, snails, and the occasional gopher. Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely, after all your hard work in the garden you have to do something.
Many garden pests fly to the plant, others crawl to it under the surface - another reason to concern yourself with soil maintenance. But herbs can actually help with pest control as well. Aphids for example, attracted by the odors, love roses and certain vegetables. Planting herbs can actually help deter them. Chives, mint, basil and cilantro can also help. Basil, for example, can help deter tomato hornworm from being attacked to your tomatoes. But this can work both way, for example, dill and yarrow can attract parasitic wasps that feed on the eggs of certain beetles. That helps keep the beetles away, but brings wasps.
At the same time, dill is a 'trap crop' for tomato hornworms. A 'trap crop' is one deliberately used to attract certain species, which then feed on the plant, rather than others you want to preserve. That means, they'll stay away from your tomatoes but eat your dill.
The way out of the dilemma is a judicious use of artificial pesticides tailored to destroy the pests that are attracted to specific herbs or plants. Take care in application, however, if you are growing herbs for seasoning. Though tested safe, some pesticides can accumulate over time.
Insects are one of the worst things to have in your garden; they can live under the soil, in old weeds or piles of leaves, or in a number of other places. In order to help keep insects away, always try and eliminate places in your garden and near your garden that these insects and other plant diseases could be living. Remove old leaves, weeds, or any other decaying matter that insects and diseases could be living in from your yard. Also, regularly turn over your garden soil and break apart any clumps of dirt so that you can eliminate the living spaces any insects that might be hiding underground.
Another way to get rid of your Garden Pests is to use dormant spray, which is used to keep destructive insects and diseases under control. It is best that you use dormant spray when your plants are dormant, usually around February or early March. I have used dormant spray many times on my garden and it has worked wonders on keeping insects out. But as I learned from experience, dormant spray is only effective if you follow the correct instructions. When I first decided to use some on my garden, I just dumped it everywhere in hopes of killing everything harmful. Unfortunately I ended up killing my entire garden along with my neighbors. Some insects can be beneficial to your garden though, so be sure to find out which insects help your garden.
Another pest problem I've had besides insects has been birds. Whenever I see birds in my garden I run outside a chase them away, but as soon as I step inside they come right back. The solution that I've come up with to keep the birds away from my garden is to put a bird feeder in my yard. Instead of costing me time and money by eating my garden, the birds eat at the bird feeder. In the long run it'll save you money. Not only can a bird feeder help keep birds away from your garden, but they can also be a new part of your yard decoration. Although not completely eliminating my bird problem, my bird feeder has made the problem smaller. Getting a dog has also helped.
If you start seeing mounds of dirt around your yard, and your plants keep unexplainably dieing, you can assume that you have a gopher problem. Thankfully, this is one of the few garden pasts that I haven't had. However my friend has struggled with tremendous gopher infestation, so I decided to research it. Gophers are rodents that are five to fourteen inches long. Their fur can be black, light brown, or white, and they have small tails. One method of getting rid of these root-eating pests is to set traps. The key successfully capturing a gopher using a trap is to successfully locate the gopher's tunnels and set the trap correctly. Another way to get rid of them is to use smoke bombs, which you place into the tunnel and the smoke spreads through out it and hopefully reaches the gopher.
If you suspect that your gardens are being pillaged by any of the Garden Pests I mentioned, I encourage you to try your hardest to eliminate the problem as soon as possible. The longer you let the species stay, the more established it will become.
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