Seeds of Change
Garden Pests
Garden Pest Control
Garden pests come in all shapes and sizes, from the thirsty chipmunks who in dry times slip through our fence to sip on a tomato, to birds who dine on the berries, and soil pests like cutworms and slugs, along with all the flying, crawling, sucking, and boring bugs.
We try and combat all these things as organically as possible. We have re-located our Winter squash to a hillside by the barn where it can not only ramble to its content, but does not seem to be as bothered by the squash bugs that seem indigenous to our fenced garden. For the rest of everything we use a combination of organic sprays and beneficial insects (not at the same time!)
We use Neem Oil on both Fruit Trees, Ornamental Trees, Roses, Flowers, Vegetables and Houseplants to control blackspot, powdery mildew, apple rest, spider mites, whiteflies. We also use AzaGuard, or Azadirachtin, which is the most active ingredient of the Neem Tree seeds from which Neem oil is made.
On fruit trees we also use an Orchard Spray that is made up of Sulphur and Pyrethrin (which comes from marigolds!) You can also plant marigolds in your garden to chase away pests.
We also use a product called Organocide which is basically Sesame seed oil mixed with fish oil. Functionally, it smothers spider mites, aphids, thrips, chinch bugs, whiteflies, mealybugs, and scale insects on roses, ornamentals, vegetables and fruit trees. And like Neem Oil is safe around people, pets and the environment.
We use Spinosad, which is a combination of spinosyn A and spinosyn D which are natural substances made by a soil bacterium that can be toxic to insects, especially the foliage feeding variety like caterpillars.
And we also use Bacillus thuringiensis which is a bacterium naturally found in soil. It makes proteins that are toxic to insect larvae, especially those of beetles (like the Japanese beetles on your roses), as well as mosquitoes, black flies, caterpillars, and moths.
Finally, you can also make up a solution of tobacco, by soaking pipe tobacco in water or even spreading pipe tobacco in the late winter around the base of trees that are being attacked by borers. Tobacco juice is one of the very first organic insecticides, and it is useful against whiteflies, gnats, root and leaf aphids, thrips and leafminers. Why would you smoke the stuff?????