Top Tips: Dealing with Garden Pests
One of the most frustrating things that can happen to any gardener is to walk outside to check on your plants.
It may seem like just a routine walk to ensure your garden is thriving, but you wind
up noticing holes in your plants that just hours ago looked perfectly fine. The
culprit for some of these plant-killing holes is probably those nasty critters we call garden pests. Some of
the principal players in this feeding frenzy are worms, slugs, birds, caterpillars, snails, and the
occasional gopher. Even though you may never eliminate these pests completely, after
all of your hard work you have to do something to save your garden. The good news is that you can do something about it.
Insects can be one one of the worst possible things to find in your garden; they thrive under
the soil, piles of leaves, grass clippings, old weeds, or any other number of places.
To keep insects away, its a good idea to first eliminate places in your garden
and the surrounding area where these pests and plant diseases might find a home.
Start by removing weeds, old leaves, and any other decaying matter
from your yard. Also, you'll want to regularly till your
garden soil to break apart any clumps of dirt. This will eliminate the
living spaces for any insects that might be hiding underground.
You may find that dormant spray is another effective way to rid your garden of pests. Spray
can be used to keep diseases as well as destructive insects at bay. It is best that you
use dormant spray when your plants are dormant, usually around the months of 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 careful
to research which insects help your garden so they don't meet the same fate as the ones you hope to eliminate.
Birds can be another pest problem other than insects. Whenever I find
birds in my garden I chase them away. But as soon as I head for the house
they're right back at it again. Believe it or not, the solution I've found to keep the birds away
from my precious fruit is to hang a bird feeder in my yard. Rather than stealing my time
and money by eating my garden, the birds choose the food of the bird feeder. Over time
this will probably save you money too. Not only does the feeder keep birds away from your
garden, it also enhances your yard's decor. Even though
it may not completely eliminate my bird problem, the feeder has significantly reduced my problem.
(I'm guessing the fact that I also just got a dog has helped as well!)
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 a 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 to
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 find that your flower or vegetable gardens are being plundered by any of these undesirable pests,
I strongly encourage you to eliminate the problem as soon
as you can. Even a rather small problem can grow exponentially the longer a species remains. Here's to happy gardening, and an
end to garden pests!
