Use Nature, as Well as Pesticides, to Defend Your Garden Against Pests

When it comes to gardening, hopefully the hard work of cultivating the soil and planting the seeds is fun for you. If you have that part out of the way, you may find that the hardest part is guarding it from pests who are ultra determined and savvy to ruin all your hard work. Now, you could take on these pests head on with poisons, or try a different method, attract animals that feed off the pests.

Of course your location makes a difference, but for most locations the main concern is usually insects. Purchasing earthworms from a worm farm or creating your own worm farm and making sure your soil has enough of them living there will not only keep the soil loose and able to take in much needed oxygen, it will also attract birds such as robins, larks, and chickadees that will eat a few earth worms but not all of them. They will also dine on the insects that can shred your plants' leaves and destroy your vegetables and fruits. Also, a good birdhouse that you load with grain in the early spring will make sure you have an army of these insect killers for some time to come.

Your second soldier is the toad - which is highly skilled at snatching insects with it's tongue. To attract these shy critters, just create plenty of shady areas - which toads love in the hot summer months. Placing some stones under bushes near your garden usually works pretty well. Also, make sure you keep the area damp with some whetted down leaves to create a warm, moist environment for them. You will be there biggest fan. During the day expect them to rest in your shady toad hangouts doing absolutely nothing - but by night they will spring into action looking for food by ridding your garden of pests.

Now, if you live in the Pacific Northwest like me, you may still have to bring out some heavier artillery like pesticides for the heartier pests. You can't expect the toads and birds to do all the work. Caterpillars can be some of the most devastating. I've personally seen caterpillars completely denude trees of all there leaves as well as devour my pea plants during rare major invasions. They are hard to miss.one of the simplest options is to use the Bordeaux poison mixture and spray the plants directly. This will definitely kill them after they do a little damage.

If you live in the northwest the slugs will devour your vegetables and make a disgusting mess of your garden. For these slimey creatures, I create a "chalkline" border with Corey's slug and snail death outside my garden fence. That's all I can do.

If you live near a lake or can create an artificial pond that attracts ducks, they can help you out in controlling the slug population.

Now the trickier part of creating a solid defense for your garden is targeting the underground pests that the birds and toads are going to miss. Specifically, ants, cut worms and lice.

Obviously with the ants you simply have to target the ant hill with your insecticide. However, cutworms, which look similar to caterpillars, except they have stripes. You know you have a problem with them by examining the damage, which involves plants that look like they were cut clean off. A very good way to block them off is by putting paper collars, or tin ones, around the plants. These collars should be about an inch away from the plant.

The plant lice on the other hand are easy to spot as they cling to the base of your plants and are usually green, brown, red, or yellow in color you just have to spray them with a basic pesticide if and when they show up.

If you follow even some of these steps, you may find the pest population diminishing over time, and many of them moving on to other gardens.