Eco-Friendly Insect Control

Every garden season is filled with beautiful or tasty surprises and a few challenges. You can prevent or reduce challenges and damage caused by insect pests and still be kind to the environment.

Check your plants thoroughly and often for insects. Remove small populations of pests by hand or use a strong blast of water to knock aphids and mites off plants.

Barriers of floating row covers can keep cabbage worms, onion maggots and other insects from laying eggs on their favorite plants. Cover the plants with the fabric at planting, anchor the edges and leave enough slack for plants to grow. Uncover flowering plants if bees are needed for pollination

Or, set out a yellow bowl filled with soapy water. The yellow attracts aphids and other harmful pests as they crash into the water and drown.

With minimal time and a bit of creativity you can keep your garden looking good all season long.

A bit more information: Enlist the young gardeners in the family to help with pest control. Children are usually more interested in the bugs and worms in the garden than the flowers. Capture some and place in a homemade or purchased bug barn. Feed the bugs their favorite food and watch them grow and change. And, when the pests need control try burning off some energy with the Pluck, Drop, and Stomp method used by the young gardeners at the Royal Botanic Garden in Hamilton Ontario. Pluck the pests off the plant, drop them on the ground and stomp. It’s eco-friendly and burns some excess energy.