Keeping the Garden Pest Away

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Just imagine being able to do your gardening without the interference of pests that are attacking your beloved plants and crops, but unfortunately life’s not always that easy and we are stuck with dealing with the small creatures that are large in the havoc they can create if left to their own devices.

Much as human illness can often be prevented through proactive healthful measures, pests can be kept away through keeping the garden clean. Compost piles do not usually cause problem, but areas that are unkempt and uncared for invite trouble.

There are many different ways to keep pest invasions down. One way is how earthworms constantly stir up the soil, which keeps the soil open to air and water. Some wild birds also help by eating the insects, such as meadowlarks, chickadees, robins, and even common sparrows. Some insects feed upon other insects, while others are harmful. Other helpful creatures of the garden are ladybugs, ichneumon flys, and toads, which are able to consume large amounts of insects in one meal.

Making your garden attractive to birds and toads is a good idea. Add a birdhouse and sprinkle grain about in the early spring. A water place helps to keep birds in the garden a little longer. For toads, they need a place of shade to rest in and by night, they will be ready to hunt for their prey. Areas that are damp, dark and quiet are preferable to toads and you can achieve this by using stones of different sizes placed under the shade of a shrub with some damp leaves underneath.

Two different classes of insects do their work in ruining your garden. One example is the grasshopper and caterpillar, which have mouths fitted for gnawing at your plants. Mosquitoes and plant lice are examples of the kind that suck the juices out of a plant and to some extent are the worst. Regardless of the kind of insect, they suck the life out of the plant.

The question we are left with is how to rid of these pests? For the ones that gnaw, a mixture of Bordeaux poison should do well, as it attacks their bodies by absorption while they eat at the plant. As for the plant suckers, direct attack works best and accomplished by insecticides sprayed onto the plant that fall onto the insect as they eat.

It may not always be the easiest to spot which insect is the culprit, however always pay attention to the destruction and the insect itself, if you happen to spot them. Cutworms are one insect that are not the easiest to see, as from experience one season, never did I happen to see them, but rather the work they did. Often they clean cut the stalks of tender plants. It’s hard to say exactly what they look like considering that the family that they come from is quite large. Some of them are a grayish striped caterpillars and they tend to rest on the ground during the day and work at night, making it difficult to catch sight of them. Cutworms start their work early in the season for the hyacinths and then are ready when the peas come in. A good way to stop them is to put paper or tin collars about an inch away around the stalk.

Plant lice are much more common and are green in color usually, but sometimes are red, yellow, or brown. These pests are easier to find since they are always clinging to their host. Sucking insects have to cling close to the plant for their food, unlike the gnawing type that eat and run, making them harder to deal with.

Rose slugs do a lot of damage to rose bushes by eating out of the body of leaves so all that is left is the vein. They are green on the top of their soft bodies and yellow below. The striped beetle attacks squash leaves and young melons and eats holes out of the leaves. The beetle has yellow stripes running lengthwise on top of black.

Another type of garden pest is the slug, which does more harm than probably any other pest. It will devour any type of plant and lays tons of eggs in any old garbage it finds. To find them you just need to pour limewater where you believe them to be and they will pop out to see what is going on.

Now for the bad news, there are those pests that attack almost any plant and those that have specific hosts, such as beans, potatoes, and cabbage. One common pest of the vegetable garden is the tomato worm, which is a large yellowish/greenish striped worm and eats its way into the young fruit. Another one, is the light green caterpillar found on celery and has black bands on each segment of its body.

The squash bug has a brown long slender body and smells bad when killed. The potato bugs a beetle with black and yellow stripes down its back. The cabbageworms, a caterpillar that is small and green. It is smaller than the tomato worm.