Organic Gardening Insect Treatment

Organic Gardening

by A.T. Wichne

Birds, ladybugs and praying mantises are the gardener's best pals when it comes to insect control. Birds can be inspired into the garden by feeding, hanging a birdhouse providing a bird bath or by planting plants that provide berries for them to eat. Ladybugs are now for sale by the pint, quart or gallon. The average-sized garden can get by on a quart or less, as there'll be about twenty-five to thirty thousand bugs per quart.

The price is often less than 5 bucks a quart. The average adult ladybug consumes between forty and fifty aphids a day. Praying mantis cases are also available and every one hatches up to four hundred young. Some gardeners have let slip that this insect vanishes rather fast from the garden, so you may wish to experiment with some to start with. They are going to eat any insect they can catch.Frogs and lizards can also control pests by eating them. You can make your garden hospitable for your natural allies by keeping a water source simply a dish full - nearby for them and by not wiping out the complete pest population with an insecticide, sending the advantageous somewhere else looking for food. Organic pest control is a total approach rather than a chemical approach.

Using natural products and building healthy soil is the best long term treatment for pests.What are the pests you should be looking for? Aphids are soft, pear-shaped, and really little ( 1 / sixteen to 3 / eight in. long ). 2 short tubes project backward from the end of their stomach. Some kinds of aphids have wings, which are clear, longer compared to their body, and held like a roof over their back. Aphids could be green, pink, yellowish, black, or powdery grey. They feed in colonies, so where there's one, there's definitely more. Once this has occurred, the aphids are defended from any treatment you give to the plant, so it is important to attack the issue as fast as possible. Several species like the bottom of leaves, so look there first.

Ants are often present where aphids are, so if there are ants in the garden, there are possibly aphids too. Aphids are the ant's food source, so they'll protect that food warding off predators that might threaten them. To naturally control aphids, first be certain to drench plants with robust sprays of water from a garden hose.

Keep your plants as healthy as feasible, and spray sleeping oil to govern over wintering eggs. At the end of the book, we will have some recipes like this for you to make yourself. These pests are light green in color with white stripes running down their back. The larvae can reach roughly one inches long and have three pairs of slim legs close to the head and 3 pairs of bigger legs at the rear end. The middle section is legless and is looped when the insect is moving.The larva is the damaging stage of the cabbage looper. The young larvae feed between the veins on the undersides of leaves. Big larvae make ragged holes in the foliage and move to the middle of the plant where feeding typically happens at the base of the cabbage head.

Enormous loopers can also burrow thru 3 to 6 layers of firmly wrapped head leaves. The simplest way to govern cabbage loopers is to handpick the larvae some times a week. If you find little holes in the leaves of your plants, you'll have earwigs. They've a pair of "pincers" at the back of their body and they run more than fly. They've a curved up stomach and release foul odor when annoyed.

Earwigs will eat holes in the leaves of plants making them shrivel and die. Usually , earwigs can be beneficial to your garden, but they can get out of control, so you need to use the general spray we'll give you later in the book. There are many ways to manipulate earwigs, but trapping them is most likely the only way to dump them from your garden. One way we like is to take a shallow dish and place lager in it.

The earwigs will be interested in the lager, climb in, drink, and die. You can seive out the dead ones and reuse the lager for trapping again. Also they are drawn to corn oil, fish oil, or water and vinegar. You can place these in dishes like the lager. If the leaves of your plants are finely dotted with yellow spots or a silvery, metallic glaze, you may have thrips. Thrips are minute about one / 16" - and not easy to see. There are a few sorts of thrips and they are of all different colors. Thrips are best controlled with sprays as we've described. You may also spray the plants with soapy water. Woman bugs will eat thrips as well, so attract those woman bugs to your garden.

Tomato hornworms are the biggest caterpillars found in this area and can measure up to four inches in length. The notable "horn" on the back of both gives them their name. Hornworms are commonly hard to see due to their protecting coloring which is green. Hornworm damage often starts to happen in midsummer and continues throughout what's left of the growing season. The size of these garden pests permits them to quickly defoliate tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. Occasionally, they could also feed on green fruit. Gardeners are probably going to spot the enormous areas of damage at the apex of a plant before they see the culprit.

The only way to manipulate hornworms is to handpick them off your plants. They eat a selection of living plants and decaying plant matter. On plants they gnaw irregular holes with smooth edges in leaves and can clip tender plant parts. However, they may also eat fruit of some trees, citrus is especially at the mercy of damage. Slugs are nightly and come out at night. They slither under rocks and leaves in the day. Holes munched into leaves and fruits are telltale evidence of slug feeding. A more certain sign of slug activity is the silvery trail of dried mucous that these pests leave in their wake.

If that is not adequately convincing, go out into the garden at night with a flashlight and surprise them. They're rather enormous, so they can be caught by hand and disposed of. This is another garden pest that be caught by setting out a dish of lager.

Whilst potentially wicked, the most acceptable way to murder a slug is to splatter it with salt. In the morning, check to determine if the slugs are in there and dispose of them.Prevent slug infestation by removing dead and decaying leaves. This could remove their first food source. Just place them round the plants you wish to protect at floor level.

About the Author

Do you need info about gardening? Visit http://gardeninginfo.comze.com - A collection of useful gardening articles and videos with information on a variety of gardening and outdoor topics.

Tell others about
this page:

facebook twitter reddit google+



Comments? Questions? Email Here

© HowtoAdvice.com

Next
Send us Feedback about HowtoAdvice.com
--
How to Advice .com
Charity
  1. Uncensored Trump
  2. Addiction Recovery
  3. Hospice Foundation
  4. Flat Earth Awareness
  5. Oil Painting Prints