Dealing with insects in your garden is inevitable.
It’s just a matter of when it happens.
Just because you have some critters munching on your food doesn’t mean that you have to break out the chemicals.
I mean do you really want to spray those toxicants on your vegetables then consume them?
Yea, I didn’t think so either.
There are other ways to deal with insect control than chemicals.
Here are three options for you to control the insects in your container garden:
1. Prevention
Much like everything else in life, prevention is the first line of defense. When it comes to dealing with aphids, a tip from Fern from Life on the Balcony is to, “keep ants off your balcony or patio. Ants “farm” aphids, moving them from plant to plant and harvesting their honeydew secretions. If you can keep ants away, you can prevent them from bringing aphids to your plants.” Read more from Fern about dealing with aphids.
2. Homemade SprayIf you are the DIY type, you can make your own insect spray. One common recipe uses garlic, onions and cayenne pepper. You’ll want to mash up the garlic and onion real good. Then add it to a quart of water and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Allow it sit overnight. Then pour it into a spray bottle and shoot the suckers down.
3. The Heavy Artillery
If you are beyond prevention and the homemade stuff isn’t getting the job, then there are products that are safe and not filled with chemicals that you can use. Safer Brand is a good resource for organic pesticides. Their products are OMRI listed, so you know they are safe (no pun intended).
They introduced a product, EndAll organic insect killer, that should solve most of your pest problems.
Here is the product description:
“EndALL™ eliminates 45 different insects, in all stages of their life cycle. What makes EndALL™ truly unique, is that it will eliminate insect eggs, preventing new insects from hatching. Best of all, EndALL™ is OMRI® Listed and USDA National Organic Program ‘approved for use in organic gardening’ so you can rest assured the product you are using, will keep your garden organic.”
With these options, you should now have enough options to get rid of those pesky insects in your garden.
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