Natural Garden Pest Control

Despite the cold weather, young shoots are coming up in the garden. That means slugs and snails will soon be making as b-line for all those fresh new leaves. As I’m trying to be increasingly sustainable with my gardening, I thought I’d grab this moment to explore natural garden pest control.

With modern gardening I think we’ve all (hopefully) got the message that compost should be peat free. The summer’s drought has also made us appreciate that rainwater should be collected. More of us are trying to grow our own fruit and veg and flowers for the home. Yet, if aphids decide to go for a precious plant, we seem tempted to go straight for the ‘nuclear’ option. Quickly heading for the very expensive chemical solutions at the garden centre. But such products are pretty indiscriminate in what they kill. Reducing populations of valuable insects too.

So, just as we’re all working hard to take all those other steps to eco-garden, I feel we should do our best to adopt much more natural approach to garden pest control. With this in mind, here are some tips and tricks I’m going to try this year.

Natural Garden Pest Control for Aphids

If your precious plants are under attack from a few aphids (greenfly and blackfly), a simple spray of cold water may do the trick in simply dislodging them. Though you may need to repeat it as they can be persistent. If it’s a larger invasion, try dusting your plants with flour. It apparently constipates them!

You can also try a spray, mix washing-up liquid and water. I’ve read of another mix. It uses four drops of essential oil such as peppermint, thyme or rosemary in a hand spray. This is then topped up with water. This will not only kill the aphids but their eggs as well.

Apparently the smell of peppermint deters aphids. So I’d be tempted to use it in the washing-up liquid spray, to ensure a more long-lasting effect.

Slugs and Snails

With a gazillion hostas in the garden, I’m under contant threat from slugs and snails. Well not personally but you know what I mean. So if slugs and snails are a nuisance reach for your coffee maker. Sprinkling coffee grounds around your plants will keep slugs and snails at bay.  And the grounds are a good nutrient for the soil too – a double whammy!

Beyond coffee, I have found that slugs and snails don’t like the marmitey mulch called Strulch. It’s definitely a bit pricier than many other types of bagged shop-bought mulches. And obviously costs more than homemade compost or leaf mould. But I think it’s worth it. I wouldn’t mulch the whole garden with the stuff, but I do use it tactically to protect those plants like hostas that are absolute slug magnets.

Alan Titchmarsh suggest putting copper collars placed around hostas as their buds push through the surface of the soil in spring or putting copper tape around the rim of pots. 

Last week I wrote about the amazing Wool plant pots which I saw at the Garden Press Event. In addition to being incredibly eco-friendly, wool is a natural slug and snail deterrent.

So for my young seedlings I’m going to bring them on in wool pots. Then I’ll plant them out keeping them in the pot – ensuring the young plant, with its juicy young leaves, has a woolly bodyguard protecting it.

Squirrels

We put up a lot of feeders to attract birds into our garden. And we’re rewarded by an absolute gang of sparrows, woodpeckers, tits, finches, starlings etc. But pesky squirrels are also attracted.

While lots of people seem to delight in having playful squirrels larking about and swinging on their bird feeders, I find them quite annoying. Not least because they eat all the food, scare off the birds, and I know that five minutes after they’ve filled themselves with all the seeds and nuts they’ll be digging up my bulbs!

But I’m pleased to report that there is a natural pest control for squirrels. Apparently they are sensitive to strong odours and garlic is one they really don’t like. So we can all deter them from digging by using a garlic spray.  All you need is water, vinegar and chopped garlic.  Simply mix these in a spray bottle, and leave it to infuse for a few hours.  Then  spray this mixture lightly on your bulbs before planting  – don’t drench them. You don’t want the bulbs to become soggy. If you’ve mixture left over, after planting you could also spray the area regularly for a few weeks. This will help deter the squirrels while your bulbs are at their most vulnerable.

If even making a simple spray like this seems like too much effort or you’re planting a lot of bulbs, chilli is another option as squirrels don’t like it either. It’s a brilliant natural pest control. Simply sprinkle chilli flakes over your bulbs before covering them with soil.

There are other natural, practical pest control solutions beyond the kitchen cupboard which you can try for pesky bulb-snatching squirrels.  For instance, when planting crocus and tulip bulbs in flower beds, add a little sharp gravel to the soil around them.  Scavenging squirrels will be deterred if they come across jagged material in the soil. It hurts their little feet. For the same reason crushed shells may work too.

Rats

I quite like big brown country rats. Indeed when the kids were little we’d use a humane trap to capture them so that the children could have a good look at the beautiful rats. We’d then let the rats go of course.

Even though I have a fondness for them, no garden (or gardener) wants masses of rats in a garden, and they do breed quickly. So keeping rats out of your garden is probably a good thing. The very good news is that, like me, rats are creatures of habit. Indeed, they have a fear of new things. This means they don’t like their territory to be disrupted.  So to prevent them settling in to your garden, regularly move things like your patio pots around. Similarly if you spot a popular rat run, place an obstacle on it forcing the rat to change its route. The disruption will really deter them. It’s a very effective natural garden pest control.

Rats sometimes can make a home in a compost heap. So make your bin or heap uninviting. That means keep it moist – rats really don’t like moisture.  And whatever you do, don’t add food scraps to the bin. That’s a massive no no.

Also be careful with food on your patio area. If you have a decking area with a barbecue, there’s a real risk food will fall through the gaps in the decking, attracting rats to live underneath. So either be scrupulously careful, or make sure you can access the area to regularly clean it out.

Using Nature as a Natural Garden Pest Control

When it comes to pest control, perhaps the most natural thing you can do is rely on nature to do the work for you. For instance, if you encourage wasps, bees, ladybirds and lacewings into your garden, they will prey on those other garden pests for you. Similarly attract lots of birds through your planting and through feeders, as house sparrows feed aphids to their chicks, while blue tits and great tits feed caterpillars to their young and some birds eat slugs and snails. Frogs, toads, hedgehogs, slow-worms and ground beetles also eat the moluscs so encourage these predators to make home in your garden. 

Companion Planting

Aside from insects and birds, you can also draft in help from plants. There are some plants, such as marigolds, basil and garlic which are natural repellents for a wide selection of common pests. For example, while I’m no veg grower, I do know that planting marigolds with vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers can repel pests such as whiteflies. 

I’ve also read that mint will deter such things as carrot and onion flies, aphids and blackfly. However, a note of caution here. Mint is a monster spreader in a garden. To avoid solving one a garden pest problem only to give yourself another plant-spreading problem all together, I would plant any mint in a container.

The highly popular poached egg plant (Limnanthes douglasii) is a wonderful little annual plant. Not only does is look gloriously pretty and sunny from May to July with its feast of bright yellow and white cup-shaped flowers, but it attracts a wide range of pollinators and insect predators. In particular it attracts hoverflies, and good old hoverfly larvae feed on aphids. Companion planting poached egg plants with roses therefore seems a really good idea to me prevent/get rid of aphids on your roses. 

Added to this, the poached egg plant will self-seed freely and naturalise around the garden. So it’s a very self-sufficient little beauty.

As many of you know, I have a bit of a love affair with erigeron, indeed it’s one of my top plants. But I’m tempted to swap in poached egg plant into some of my planting areas, where I’d normally have erigeron, just to provide a better support to the insect population in my garden.

So that’s it. Some natural ways to keep garden pests at bay.

In my experience, if we stop using commercial pest killers, which after all indiscriminately kill lots of beneficial insects too, we will restore some balance. The insects and creatures we want in our gardens will eventually return in much greater numbers and do all the hard work for us.

Using these natural methods to restore that natural eco-system of predator and yes, the odd pest, to our gardens and will eventually mean we have a garden that’s much more likely to take care of itself as far as pests are concerned.

Now isn’t that a happy gardening thought!