PESTS/PESTICIDES

Pests/Pesticides

1. Residential users of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides apply more pounds per acre of these chemicals then farmers do. As these pollutants run off, they harm aquatic life and contaminate the food chain. If you keep your soil healthy, you won't require chemical fertilizers.
2. Safe herbal pest repellants include garlic and hot-pepper sprays, which can be made by processing these herbs with water in a blender, straining out the pulp, and diluting heavily with water. Keep handy to spray with a pump sprayer as needed.
3. Botanical pesticides are derived directly from plants. Some are even more toxic than some synthetics. However, botanicals break down rapidly, and do not accumulate in the food chain as synthetics do.
4. Diatomaceous earth is a readily available organic contact pesticide - it is a white powder which is actually abrasive material used to damage the skin and joints of insects, and to create slug barriers. As the bugs and slugs climb over it, it damages them.
5. An effective way to get rid of slugs and snails without hurting them is to embed a continuous ring of copper tape around a plant. Their bodily juices react with the copper, creating a mild electrical current that repels them. Copper tape can be purchased in many garden stores, as well as online. 
6. Don't run for a can of pesticide when you could pick off and mash a few harmful insects. A blast of water can strip aphids from your plants. Use pruning shears to remove tent caterpillars.
7. Barriers don't kill pests, but keep them out. They include floating row covers which are placed over growing plants, netting for keeping birds off fruiting plants and trees, copper slug barriers - slugs cannot cross a 3" wide sheet of copper, and protective collars, made from a 3" piece of stiff paper of plastic pressed into the ground around seedlings, preventing cutworms.
8. To deter deer from grazing in your landscape, try placing strongly scented bar soap, or human hair, around your plants. The hair can be "recycled" from a salon or barber shop. There are also several different commercial brands of organic deer repellant.
9. The most important step in pest management is to maintain healthy soil. It produces healthy plants, which are better able to withstand disease and insect damage.
10. Aphids? Spray infested stems, leaves, and buds with a very dilute soapy water, then clear water. It works even on the heaviest infestation.
11. Organic pest control is a comprehensive approach instead of a chemical approach. Create a healthy biodiversity so that the insects and microbes will control themselves. Using natural products and building healthy soil is the best long-term treatment for pests.
12. Use the least-disruptive and least-polluting protections against a pest. Try the following methods as applicable: first physical removal, barriers, and traps; next, biological controls; then, appropriate botanical and mineral pesticides.
13. Are you rotating your crops? Changing the position of plants in different crop families from year to year can help reduce pest problems.
14. A no-fail slug and snail trap is a lid of beer - bury a lid or tuna sized can with the lip of the container level with the soil surface, so the pests fall in and drown.
15. An excellent way to control slugs is by using crushed eggshells. Dry them in
    a paper bag, then crush them up and sprinkle them around the plants you want to
    protect. Slugs won't crawl on the sharp shells, and when the shells decompose
    they'll add calcium to the soil.
16. If the aphids on your trees and garden plants don’t respond to the
    old “spray ‘em off with the water hose” method, give them a little
    homemade lemonade. Like ants, their occasional herders, aphids abhor
    citric acid, which is a key ingredient in the makeup of lemons,
    oranges, grapefruits, and other citric fruit.  Lemon peel is especially strong, so grate a teaspoon of it and steep
    it in a pint of hot water overnight. Then strain it through a coffee
    filter or cheesecloth, add three drops of insecticidal soap (to make it
    stick), and put into a spray bottle. The mixture may end up smelling
    pleasant to you as you spray it on your plants, but it’ll send those
    bugs packing in no time.
17. If you think bloodmeal smells nasty to you, imagine how bad it
    smells to an animal that depends on its nose for a living. If you
    sprinkle a little around your plants, small rodents (including
    squirrels) will stay away. To keep it from wearing away or being washed away when it rains, put
    a tablespoon or so into each of several margarine bowls, add a little
    water and a rock (to keep the bowl from blowing over) and distribute
    them around the garden. The powerful smell will keep most rodents away.
    It'll keep you away, too, if you don't keep the lids so you can cover
    up the bowls when you're working in the garden.