As a gardener, it is critical that you understand the ways to keep plant pesticides and insects away from your crops.
The most productive means of managing insect pests in a home garden is to develop a combination of strategies such as those that are cultural, biological and even mechanical. Gardeners that cultivate crops in an organic manner relay on methods that utilize products that are non-chemical in nature.
If you have the desire to reduce your dependency on pesticides on your crops and want to eliminate the insects that have the potential to destroy those crops, it is critical that your pest management plan involves planning ways to keep plant pesticides and insects away before planting.
This is much more productive and easier than contending with a pest complication once it has disrupted your crops.
In this guide, you will learn some effective strategies on how to reduce your need for potentially harmful pesticides and will help in eliminating problems with common insects that invade the garden.
The Problem with Pesticides
In order to understand why it is important to keep pesticides away from the plant life in your garden, it is first important to understand why the use of pesticides poses problems.
As a home gardener, pesticides are commonly utilized as a type of last resort option to prevent high levels of damage from insects. In gardening, you already know that there are insects that are harmful to your crops and insects that are beneficial to your crops.
The main problem with pesticides is that they do not distinguish between insects that are considered to be “Good” and those that are considered to be “Bad”.
- If the population of beneficial insects is reduced, the population of pest insects will increase.
- As a result of the increased pest insects, you will discover that you continue to experience complications with your crops.
- However, by learning some simple strategies on ways to keep plant pesticides and pest insects away, you may successfully avoid these challenges.
Use Only Healthy Soil
In order to eliminate the need for pesticides and the problems that pest insects pose to your garden, it is imperative that you ensure that you utilize only the healthiest soil for your plants.
According to professionals in the gardening industry, if the soil is healthy within a garden, the plants within that garden will be able to successfully resist diseases that hinder plant growth and pest insects that cause damage to crops.
Prior to planting the items that you wish to cultivate, you should turn the soil and add a high level of organic material such as compost and even manure.
- By doing so, you will be adding a high level of nutrients to the soil, which will optimize its overall health. While utilizing synthetically created fertilizers may prove to be beneficial, it is best to use fertilizers that are organic due to the fact that they release nutrients through all stages of plant growth – not just upon administration of the substance like synthetic fertilizers do.
Companion Planting is Highly Beneficial
As a gardener, it is imperative to understand that there are numerous plants that contain certain types of compounds or give off certain types of compounds in order to repel pest insects in the garden.
- If you have a desire to keep plant pesticides and troublesome insects away from your garden, you should indulge in what professionals refer to in the gardening industry as “Companion Planting”.
- This is a special process that involves the strategic placement of plants that naturally repel pest insects next to plants that will benefit from this effect.
- For example, if you have a row of tomatoes planted, you should place basil on either side of that row as it will help to combat the invasion of troublesome hornworms. In the same respect, if you have vegetables planted in your garden, you should place garlic near the crops so that spider mites, Japanese beetles and vegetable eating weevils are properly repelled and your vegetables are protected.
Rotate Your Crops Regularly
As a gardener, you should ensure that you rotate where you plant each of your crops each year.
This is a step that will help you successfully keep pesticides and unwanted pest insects away from your prized crops. Many insects will burrow in the soil in regions where they know that a food source has been found previously in the winter months.
- When these insects resurface when the weather becomes warmer, they will search for the food source that they originally fed upon. If that source is not there, they will initiate a travel session in search for that food.
- However, many of these insects will die along the way due to the fact that they are not receiving nutrition quickly enough.
- Furthermore, many of the insects will become prey for various types of insects, and even birds.
- When you rotate crops, you will quickly discover that the populations of troublesome insect pests will dwindle and you will experience fewer complications.
Conclusion
As you can see from the information contained within this guide, there are many ways to keep pesticides and pest insects from your garden.
It is important that you remember that not all insects are considered to be “Bad”. In fact, there are many insects that may prove to be exceptionally beneficial to your cultivation efforts.
- These insects feed on those insects that are considered to be detrimental to your crops and they assist in moving nutrients closer to the roots of your plants.
- In order to truly eliminate unwanted pest insects from your garden, it is imperative that you research insects to determine which ones are beneficial to your crops and which ones are detrimental to your crops.
- In your research, you will learn how to properly identify these pests and will learn many more strategies for eliminating the need for pesticides in your gardening efforts.
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