Gardening and pest control Articles | Gardening

By: Darren Williger

If only gardening was without its inevitable pest infestation problem, how simple and nice a gardener’s life would be. A constant vigil must be kept, as garden pests are famous for appearing suddenly and though small in size, they have enormous power for destruction. Like a human illness can be prevented with healthy living conditions, similarly a garden must be kept clean of clutter, debris and all unkempt areas if you wish to avoid plant diseases from attacking your garden.

There are various simple but effective pest control measures available readily. They are nature-driven and happen equally naturally. There are many ‘friends of the garden’: the earthworm, which digs the soil repeatedly and lets in fresh air and water into the soil. Birds like sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles love to have insects and keeps our garden free of many harmful insects. Then there are insects which eat other insects. The lady bug and the ichneumon-fly are perfect examples of this. It is amazing the number of insects a toad can consume in one meal. In turn, it helps us to keep our garden free of pests.

So the wise thing to do is to make your garden welcome these ‘friends of the garden’ by making adequate arrangements. For instance, for the birds you could construct a bird house, a watering place and sprinkle grains in early spring. These are ways to invite the birds to come and settle in your garden. How do you make your garden comfortable for toads? It is fairly simple really, if you know what toads prefer. They like damp, dark and quiet corners. During hot summer afternoons they like to retreat to a shady place and in the night they go out for their meals. Interestingly, they do not kill their prey, instead they have them live. To prepare their retreat, you could place some stones of same size in a shady place and perhaps prepare a bed of damp leaves.

Insects can be categorized into two broad types: one which gradually gnaws at a plant to devour it. They have the requisite mouth to do this activity. Caterpillars and grasshoppers belong to this category. Sucking the plant of its nutrient juices, they bring the worst damage to the plants. Plant lice belong to this category too just like mosquitoes which suck blood from us to live. Scale insects, on the other hand, clasp themselves to the plant and suck out life-giving juices from the plant.

So, what is the remedy to get rid of such pests? The Bordeaux mixture which is the poison spray is usually used for managing these pests. Using insecticides is the other option, where you can tackle the pests directly. Insecticides are usually sprayed on the plant to touch the bodies of the insects.

Then there are underground insects which attack plants. When you see a lot of ant hills on the garden floor, you know that there is presence of underground insects in this garden. Here is a remedy to combat any attack from underground pests, which must be very carefully used.

One of the frequently asked questions from gardeners is how to detect which type of insect is attacking the garden. This can be answered partly by studying the type of damage done to the plants and partly by watching the insects. The latter is rather difficult to do. For instance, I had an attack of cut worms during one season, but I never saw any one insect throughout the damaging process. When you see a tender shoot completely cut off, you know that cut worms are at work. Sometimes you have to decipher the type of insect by studying the type of damage they have done. If you want to know what a cut worm looks like, it is difficult to tell, since they come in so many varieties. Mostly they are caterpillars with grayish colored stripes. Since they work only during night, it is difficult to catch sight of them. They appear early in the season to cut off the tender stalks of hyacinth. Then when the peas appear, the cutworms destroy them too. A good way to prevent plants from cut worms is to use paper or tin collars around the plants. Keep the collars an inch away from the plant stems.

Plant lice are the next most common garden pest. They come in a variety of colors – green, red, yellow or brown. They are easily locatable as they always cling to their host. Since they stay alive by sucking the host plant, they are always close to it and easily identifiable. But the problem is that they suck and hide, which makes it difficult to destroy them.

Rose bushes suffer a lot from attacks of rose slugs. They consume the body of the leaves leaving only the veins. Their bodies are soft with green on top and yellow underneath.

Melons and squash leaves are always under attack by beetles, especially the striped beetles. They have their backside with black and yellow stripes which run along the length of the body.

Slugs, another type of garden pest devours nearly everything – be it a flower, plant or vegetable, lay its eggs on rubbish dump. Regarded as one of the most harmful of all pests which invade the garden, you can locate them easily. Since they rest below the ground during day time, your aim should be to bring them above the ground. Simply water the soil where slugs are supposed to be hiding. Their hiding place is near the plant which they are attacking. So it is easy to detect their possible hiding place. Use clean lime water and water the soil to bring them above ground.

Over and above the common garden pests which attack the usual plants there are also special pests for specific plants. For instance, beans, potatoes and cabbage plants have pests which feed exclusive on these plants. In fact, the vegetable garden can be infested by several types of insects like the cutworm, slug and ants. The vegetable garden truly takes the cake when it comes to inviting pest infestation. Another common vegetable garden pest is the tomato worm. Having a yellowish or greenish striped appearance, its favorite diet is the young fruit of the vegetable. Celery plants are attacked by a light green looking caterpillar. This pest is identifiable by its black bands one on each ring or segment of its body.

Another pest often infesting a garden is the squash bug – known for its brown, long and slender body and a repelling body odor when killed. The potato bug has yellow and black stripes and has a crusty back. Then there is green cabbage worm which looks like a small caterpillar, which is even smaller than the tomato worm.

This completes nearly all the frequently-encountered garden pests.