Garden Pests
| So, you have done everything to perfection to prevent disease and garden pests from attacking your favorite plants as outlined in Organic Pest Control, and one day your plants aren’t looking so good. You must first confront the fact that no matter how hard you try, it is not a perfect world and garden pests are tenacious buggers.
The first thing to do is determine what is causing the damage. Is it disease or garden pests? Most garden pests can be easily identified visually, although some require the use of a handheld magnifying glass. Excellent photos for easy identification of garden pests are readily accessible on the internet or at your local library. Following are some of the more common garden pests and their controls, listed in order of preference from most to least environmentally friendly.
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Aphids – Hosts: Most fruits and vegetables, many flowers and ornamentals. Wash off with water; spray with garlic or tomato leaf solution, alcohol, citrus oil, insecticidal soap, or as a last resort, pyrethrin or rotenone.
Cabbage Looper – Hosts: Cabbage family, beets, celery, lettuce, peas, spinach, and tomatoes. Handpick these garden pests often. Encourage parasitic wasps by interplanting herbs. Spray with BTK, garlic oil, pyrethrin, ryania, or sabadilla.
Colorado Potato Beetle – Hosts: These garden pests attack nightshade family plants such as tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, peppers, and petunias. Early in season handpick or shake these garden pests on to cloth and kill; plant flowers nearby to attract predators; use deep straw mulches; cover plants with row covers; release spined soldier bugs; apply parasitic nematodes to soil; release parasitic wasps; spray with double strength BTSD; spray weekly with pyrethrin, rotenone, or ryania.
Corn Earworm – Hosts: Corn is most affected by these garden pests; also tomatoes and many flowers. Squirt a dropper full of mineral oil into the tips of the corn ears after silk starts to turn dark, or spray BTK into the tips or spray with ryania. Mineral oil always worked for us.
Cutworms – Hosts: Tomatoes and cabbage family seedlings and transplants seem to be most affected by these garden pests, but most vegetable and flower seedlings and transplants are vulnerable. Placing a 2-inch high collar (toilet paper and paper towel rolls cut to size) placed 1/2-inch into the soil around all transplants and seedlings is most effective, or apply a solution of parasitic nematodes to the soil a week before planting.
Scales – Hosts: Many fruits, ornamental shrubs and trees and especially indoor plants are susceptible to these garden pests. Routinely check the underside of leaves, where they may first appear. Prune and dispose of infested twigs and branches harboring these garden pests, spray with rubbing alcohol or scrub off using a soft brush or cloth and soap and water. On fruit and ornamental trees, apply dormant oil sprays before buds start to break in early spring, spray pyrethrin or rotenone. Our favorite on houseplants is alcohol spray.
Striped Cucumber Beetle – Hosts: Squash family, beans, corn, peas, and blossoms of many plants. These garden pests swarm on seedlings, often killing them and attack the leaves, stems, flowers and fruit of older plants. They can also transmit wilt and mosaic viruses. Cover seedlings with row covers, but remove in the mornings after plants start to flower to allow bees to pollinate. Otherwise you must pollinate by hand. Apply parasitic nematodes to soil to control larvae, use a deep straw mulch, spray with rotenone when beetles are seen feeding on plant flowers.
Always check the underside of your plants’ leaves, since most garden pests try to hide from you at the beginning of an infestation.
