Controlling Pests In Your Vegetable Garden The Natural Way
Pests are one of the biggest sources of losses each year in your garden
, but if you properly take care of it you should not have to worry. Did you know that plants that are properly watered, cultivated and fertilize can actually resist pests more than plants that aren't? First you'll want to choose plants for your garden that have a natural resistance to pests.
There are many plants that are resistant to disease, but it is much harder to find insect resistant ones. Do not save your own seed to use in your next garden if you have grown your current plants from seed. Plant diseases often originate in seeds. Buy new seeds every year to prevent disease, make sure you go to a seller who deals in high quality, pest resistant seeds. Strong and healthy seedlings are what you need to be planting if you are going to transplant. If a plant is too sparse, too young or even too old it may not transplant properly and it will be vulnerable to certain garden pests.
One good way to control a lot of soil borne diseases is to rotate your vegetables in your garden each year. This can be achieved best by rotating your corn with any other crops you have. Following corn with cole crops like cabbage, broccoli, and greens, cole crops with solanaceous crops like tomatoes, potatoes, and pepper, solanaceous crops with legumes like peas or beans and legumes with corn again is an acceptable four year rotation.
Good sanitation in your garden is another way to keep the pests at bay, clear out any cull piles or infested crops. There are a lot of pests that will thrive on the residues left behind by vegetable matter, so don't use this for mulching. Use leaves, straw or other material that isn't from your garden as mulch. However, there are some drawbacks that come with using mulch that you definitely want to consider before using it. Mulch allows some insects to survive inside of it and they are able to reach your plant without you noticing them.
Plant viruses can be contained and minimized by using good sanitation practices. In advance of dealing with pruning, close cultivation, or transplants, tools and hands must be washed in water and soap. Tobacco is notorious for housing plant viruses, including the tobacco mosaic. If you are harvesting tobacco, extra care should be taken to avoid this.
Weeds can also provide a place for garden pests to survive and they can end up attacking your plants. Weeds attract certain pests and insects, so make sure that you weed your vegetable garden regularly to avoid this. In addition to causing damage to plants, insects like the aphids, leafhoppers, beetles, mites, and nematodes can often live in weeds and transplant diseases to your plants. Keep your garden well weeded and make sure to clear away any Johnson Grass, it is a perennial weed which can often hide harmful pests.
To keep your gardens clear of pests and insects you need to practice proper moisture control. The best disease control strategy is to water only early in the day. You will probably be able to avoid using a fungicide if you water at the proper time of day. Watering at night is especially harmful because the plants remain moist longer, this can create a fungus invasion especially since fungus flourishes in warm, wet places.
Putting some sort of barrier or shield around transplants is another effective means of keeping some types of insects away. Many gardeners will use shields made of cardboard, plastic milk jugs or even old shingles so that the item can go down into the ground a few inches. There are many unwanted pests that you can keep away with this strategy and it is particularly useful for keeping tomatoes and peppers free from grubs and wire worms that come from below. There are also biological controls that can be used, such as using a predator insect to kill insects that eat vegetables, but predators should not be artificially brought into the garden. However, you would do well to not destroy these predator insects if they already are in the area, some examples are praying mantis, ladybugs, spiders, ground beetles, lacewings, and syrphid flies.
If you cannot keep pests at bay by using methods which don't involve chemicals, you can consider using pesticides, though only as a final answer. You must obey the directions contained on the label precisely. Wait the number of days which the directions recommend, since over use will damage your garden; when the directions tell you plainly to wait a fixed number of days after spraying the chemical before you begin harvesting, do as they tell you.
by: Jacob Alexander
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