Garden Pests - Keep Your Guard Up!

The subject of garden pests is extensive and the information available could easily fill a large and comprehensive website.



There are loads of books out there dedicated to dealing with plant pests, and with the current popularity of organic growing; the demand for information on non toxic pest control is growing at an exponential rate.

As it's early in the season right now, I'm happy to say that pests have not been a major issue so this page is currently not that big! However, I will be adding new articles to this page throughout the year.

It is my intention to try to be as 'organic' as possible whilst dealing with any pests and using nature to deal with them. I really don't want to resort to putting chemicals on my plants, after all I'm going to be eating them and one of the points of this whole project was to get away from the "chemically grown" produce of the supermarkets.

Critter or insect 'Hotels'
One of the non toxic pest control methods you can use as a preventative measure to help protect you from the wrong kind of garden pests is to try attracting the "right" kind of creatures in to your garden.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by putting up "critter hotels".

Depending on the type and size, these can be used to attract anything from hedgehogs, frogs, ground beetles and other carnivorous predators to take care of things like slugs, snails and aphids. Critter hotels can be made simply by leaving piles of untreated wood, small tree branches and tree bark in 'quiet' areas of the garden that will go undisturbed. Drilling small holes in the wood will also help to attract lacewings, ladybirds etc that will hibernate there during the winter months and thrive during the growing season.

My thanks go to Andrew from Cambridge (a regular blogger to this website) for helping provide me with some of this valuable information.

Slugs
So my first garden pests this year have been slugs. We've suffered with them ever since we've lived at the house. They love the moist temperate climate here and seem to thrive. They have especially taken a liking to my butternut squash and cucumber plants and are a constant source of annoyance.
This article and video tells how I am trying to deal with them without the use of pesticides and chemicals.

I hope to be adding more pest control advice to this page as the growing season progresses. As each issue arises (not that I'm hoping for more problems!) I hope to be able to report on how I deal with it.

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