Keep Your Vegetable Plot Pest Free Naturally
This article includes links I have been paid to include but all information about your vegetable plot are helpful to you anyway.
A vegetable garden is usually kept so you can provide fresh, healthy vegetables to your family. When you grow it yourself, you are in control of what goes into your soil.
Why then, do so many people use pesticides in their garden? I understand the need to keep the pests away, but there are ways to do this naturally so that you don’t end up with fruit and veg that is no healthier than what you get at your local supermarket.
To help you out, I have made this list of ways to keep the pests away naturally so you can still get the most out of your garden.
1 – Attract beneficials
There are bugs and animals like birds that will gladly come to your garden and eat all the bad bugs so you don’t have to spray the plants with chemicals.
They just need an invitation. For instance, adding outdoor water features will bring in the birds that will eat the bad bugs that will destroy your garden. Just make sure to cover up the garden when you are putting the seeds in or they will eat those too!
You can also plant things like marigolds to attract bugs that eat aphids that do a lot of damage to your tomato and pepper plants.
2 – Choose pest-resistant plants
Some plants are very good at thriving even when there are bugs trying to eat their leaves, flowers or fruit. Peas, corn, carrots and celery are hardy enough to get through a season without much damage from bugs.
If you time your plantings in the vegetable plot, then many of them will mature before the bugs are even around. Peas are good early crops to grow that will have you eating the peas just as the unwanted guests are arriving.
3 – Cover them up
If the pests are animals and not bugs you worry about then putting them under a protective cover is best.
There are types of netting that can let in plenty of light and keep out any squirrels, mice or other undesirable animals that love vegetables.
If you are using a raised bed garden in a box, then this is ideal since you can make the cover easy to open by adding it to a frame.
4 – Pick them off
Yes, even manually picking off the areas where there are bugs is helpful. It is time-consuming if you have a big garden, but if you keep up with it then it won’t take you too long to do once in a while.
If a particular plant is overly infested, then tear it out and keep it from spreading to the other plants.
5 – Learn to love ugly vegetables
Sometimes when bugs get to your plants early they don’t actually do too much damage. They can simply make the fruit or vegetables look less appealing than what you find in the supermarket. These vegetables don’t taste any worse even though they may look ugly. When they are chopped up in a recipe who would know?
