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Keep Your Garden Free Of Bad Bugs

By: Tom Johnson It can take as little as 2 hours for insects to destroy your plants and all your hard work. You don't need any annoying pests wreaking havoc on your plants after you've spent hours of your time and toil planting out your garden.

If you try to avoid this problem by not allowing the bad bugs to take over your garden from the start, you create other ones. A large proportion of the chemicals used in the readily available pesticides are toxic to small children and pets.

All these chemicals are designed to do one thing - kill living things and they're very good at it. That means they also kill any beneficial insects that you should encourage to make their home in your garden beds.

The bugs that can be your best defense against the pests that want to damage your crops need to be allowed in, not killed off with the rest by indiscriminate spraying of chemicals. These gardeners friends, such as spiders and ladybugs, will help you by repelling or eating the bad guys.

By planting the good pests favorite plants so that they make their home in your garden, you'll keep the bad pests out. The best place to find out what plants you need is at your local garden center.

There are some plants with a scent that repels the bad bugs and others that they just don't like. If you want a healthy harvest of tomatoes, you can plant the herb borage among them or even marigolds, these will stop the pests from damaging your fruit.

Another thing to keep in mind is to keep your garden neat and tidy. The harmful pests are often attracted to piles of leaves, debris, grass cuttings and dense spots of weeds. Many of the bad pests can thrive in those areas, so weed your garden regularly and clean up any leaves and grass cuttings that find their way into your garden.

There are also some home remedies that will repel these damaging pests such as a hot pepper wax spray. The harmful insects and even some native pests will be put off by the spicy oil residue this leaves on your plants.

If you're concerned about any taste left on your edible crops after using this spicy concoction, you don't have to worry. Just make sure you thoroughly wash them after harvest and you won't have any problem.

By being proactive you remove the risk of all your hard work being undone. Many gardeners are discouraged by the apparent wasted effort when their crop is ruined by these pests - don't let that happen to you.

Do a little homework first around your local area and find out what are the best companion plants to keep the good guys around and what will annoy the bad pests, this will pay dividends.