Garden Pests Prevention and Control

Well, to continue one of my previous posts Garden Insects & Pests, I'm going to bring up some of the things we can do in our gardens to keep our plants happy and healthy. Keep in mind, it can all be done without using any man made chemicals, strictly natural!
All kinds of garden pests, diseases and fungi can attack your plants. However, there's a lot of stuff we can do in our everyday garden maintenance to prevent such unwanted guests from visiting our gardens. On the other hand, if allowed to thrive, extreme control measures are necessary to get rid of them.

Prevention
It's better to be safe, than sorry!

• Cleanliness/tidiness is a very important factor in pests prevention and should be incorporated in every gardeners routine. Removing the garden debris in which many insects live will help for sure. Don't let the leaves to accumulate on the soil surface and try to keep it as tidy as you can. And one more thing,always keep your garden tools clean(you can only guess why)!

• Pruning is also very important, it will increase airflow, encourage new growth and improve the overall state of your plant. Healthy plants are much more disease resistant and while pruning your plants when it's needed, you will simply be removing diseased or dead parts of the plants!

• New plants in our gardens our always a joy, but there are those times when they become our worst nightmare. When importing new plants in your garden always be sure to check them out properly for possible pests and diseases. A single, beautiful new plant in your garden might bring you a whole lot of problems in your garden, so I advise you to think twice.

• Companion planting is also a very helpful way of keeping your garden plants healthy. Certain plants are known to discourage certain insects. This way you have an everyday natural insect repellent in your garden. I can say that my apartment is almost 100% fly and mosquito free and it's all thanks to the choice of the plants I've made this year. Growing so many herbs on my balcony garden turned out rewarding in so many ways. Choosing the plants you grow in your garden is very important if you want to create a healthy organic garden, so do your research before you do any planting.

Control
Even with all preventative measures taken, sometimes pests and diseases will take over your garden. When that happens things go downwards pretty fast and you have to take control!

• Manual removal is an option, but only in very early stages of infestation and for people with good eyesight, a lot of patience and not too many plants.

• Natural organic sprays represent significantly better option that should help you get rid of your garden infestation. I like to use neem oil which is very effective against all kinds of pests, very easy to use and pretty inexpensive. Spray the foliage of your plants(under the leaves also) heavily and that should do the trick, if not repeat the process a few more times.Just recently, I've used Neem oil to protect my cherry tomatoes from aphid and spider mite infestation and again it worked great. Pyrethrum based sprays work o.k. also, but are unreasonably expensive from my point of view.

• Biological control or introducing predators and parasites into your garden is also a great way of controling garden pests, as well as a great preventative measure. If you don't have a ladybug or a lacewing in your garden don't despair, today it's possible to order them online. If you like the idea, check out this site with loads of info and a great offering of beneficial insects.

Will it be enough?

Well, it's still raining, but at least now my plants are standing upright. I've added some additional support for my balcony tomatoes and tied everything as best as I could. I wonder will it be enough!? For sure, it will make things better for my plants, but still I couldn't find a stake big enough for my crazy growing tomatoes. The plants that were injured were taken care of and now I can only wait for them to heal. I can only hope it wont stress my plants too much and effect flowering and fruit producing. Unfortunately, I haven't had and still don't have a camera to record the state of my balcony garden before&after the night that caused problems in my urban garden. However, here are a few photographs of veggies taken a few days ago after the rain.

Wet Tomatoes







Still I haven't done anything regarding the aphid and spider mite issue, but I hope rain will do some of my work. Right now, there's no sense in applying Neem oil because the rain would wash it off. Nevertheless, I'll have to spray some on my plants as soon as the rain stops falling. I'll be posting some information on Neem oil, soon too. Hopefully, I'll have the camera to record some of the stuff I'm writing about in this garden blog of mine.

Garden Insects & Pests

Gardeners across the world usually share a significant amount of mutual interests and problems. Some of those are: pests and diseases, over watering and under watering , fertilizing , growing techniques, propagation, pruning issues and many other common gardening issues.

Urban gardening isn't so much different from any other form of gardening. After all, we all try to grow happy and healthy plants. Therefore, whether you garden indoors or outdoors, in urban or natural environment, you've already or certainly are about to have some experience with insects and pests in your garden. Insects are an important part of every naturally balanced garden and as everything in nature, they have they purpose in the ecosystem as a whole. Some of them are beneficial to our gardens, as they feed on pests or pollinate the flowers of plants. The ones we call harmful create problems by feeding on our plants and are therefore undesirable. However, most pest problems can be prevented, but if left unchecked extreme control measures are often necessary. Prevention and control are two main aspects of dealing with garden pests and insects, but most importantly it can all be done in natural, sustainable manner.

It's important, for me at least, to live my life in a sustainable manner and try to get back to my roots, to natural living. Being environment friendly isn't something you can teach your kids, while at the same time you destroy and pollute that same environment in every possible way. Kids need an example, something and someone to look up to and right now they are not looking at a pretty picture. Everyday we have the opportunity to do something good for our planet or maybe, better said not to do so much wrong. Equally, every gardener has a choice: organic or chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides or natural alternatives.

I made my choice! It's organic!