Groxie

A few days ago John and I were pleasantly surprised to find a toad in our garden. I have no idea how he got there—we have a chickenwire cover on the garden. But I’m very happy he found his way in and ate some bugs for us. His visit got me thinking about garden pest control.

Choose plants carefully

You can grow plants that attract beneficial bugs and other critters to eat the ones you don’t want around. You can also choose plants that repel certain pests.

Beneficial Bugs

What type of bug you’ll need depends on your garden pest, but this site seems to have the best price I’ve seen.

Chickens

Surprise surprise, chickens love to eat bugs! Now there’s a another reason to get a move on if you’ve been thinking about raising some chickens of your own.

Sprays, and fencing, and traps—oh my!

If your problems are bigger than bugs, you might need to employ a few more methods. Deer and rabbits shy away from homemade garlic spray. You can also fence in your garden with some chickenwire. Havahart has no—kill traps for many of the smaller garden rodents like moles and groundhogs. They’ve also got a pretty good section about other options for controlling intruders.

Insecticidal soap

This stuff works wonders, and you can make it at home. I like to use Dr. Bronner’s liquid soaps for all sorts of household cleaning. From now on I’ll use them in the garden, too. i would only use a soap spray as a last resort, though.

Because we have a little raised garden, pest control is easy to manage without too much effort. We can usually just go out and squish ‘em one by one. I know we won’t always have it this easy, so I’ve been trying to bone up on my knowledge. There are plenty of great resources out there; Mother Earth News often has great gardening articles with solutions that are usually D.I.Y., cheap, and time—tested.