     |
Pest Control Tips - All the hints and tips you need to maintain your perfect garden
Slugs in our gardens can be a huge problem, especially if we have young or delicate plants. A good pest control tip which can help cut down the numbers of slugs in your garden, when spring comes is to give the soil in your garden a rake. This will disturb the earth surrounding the slug’s habitat and expose them and their eggs to the elements. The best time of year to do this is in the winter, the harsh winter climate will work wonders.
A nice way to cut down on the slug population in your garden is to try and attract slug eating animals into your garden such as toads/frogs and hedgehogs. These animals can get through their fair share of slugs. To attract the amphibians, why not build a small pond in your garden, this doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, a small one will do, I’ve built two ponds in my garden, only small ones, and they are always attracting frogs, toads and newts. As one famous person said, “build it and they will come”. To attract our prickly friend, the hedgehog, leave out food they are partial to, but don’t give them too much as they won’t have enough room for the slugs. They seem to like cat food and watered down milk. Leave this under hedgerows and they’ll be attracted to the food and when they are satisfied with the offerings you give them, they’ll return night after night. Another good pest control tip in regards to our friend the slug is to remove any dead leaves or foliage from in and around the plants you are trying to protect. You need to do this because you’ll be removing the main source of food for them; if there is no food then they won’t be attracted to that spot in your garden. Aphids, just like slugs can be a menace in your garden especially to young or delicate plants, similar to slugs too is the fact that the best way to keep numbers down is to invite their natural predators into your garden. Aphid eating animals include hoverflies, ladybirds and beetles. To attract these “gardener’s friends” into your garden you need to plant marigolds near aphid black spots as clinical results show this method significantly reduces their numbers. The hoverflies are very good, because they specifically lay their eggs near populations of aphids as this is the main source of food for their larvae. You could use a pesticide to rid your garden of perennial pests but this could be damaging to friendly garden animals. If you do want to use a chemical method then fill an empty spray bottle with soapy water and spray the affected areas, once a week should suffice. In some gardens moles are troublesome they can make a huge mess of your lawn. They are attracted by the earthworms, thus, making your lawn a prime target. A good pest control tip which will cut down on mole attacks, this would be by controlling the numbers of worms, this perhaps isn’t really a viable option as they do a very good job in your garden, it would just be a matter of “cutting off your nose despite your face”. Personally I think the best method is to use the moles hyper sensitive sense of smell to drive them away. Just get a good outdoor disinfectant, mix it with water and then spray it down the mole runs. Then what you’ll need to do is spray the rest of your lawn with the same diluted fluid, to make sure the moles don’t just move to another spot in your garden. You’ll need to follow the same procedure every day for approx. 10 days. Cats can cause problems in the garden too. This is down to their toilet habits. They’ll disturb seed beds or young plants when they’re covering up their mess. They will also hunt down frogs, which can be a problem if you’re trying to attract these to eat slugs. One thing which seems to scare cats is the crinkling noise a plastic bag makes. What you need to do here is tie a plastic bag to a stick, just like a flag and when the wind blows the nose it makes will scare off the cats. However there is one flaw with this, it needs to be breezy for it to work. A scientific method you can adopt is to use an infra-red high frequency transmitter. When the laser beam is broken it will let off a high pitched buzzing noise, which humans cannot hear but cats can. It doesn’t harm them it just makes them very uncomfortable, making them want to leave your garden. After a couple of times of triggering the device the cats will learn to avoid your garden. Thanks for checking out our OPH Good Housekeeping pest control tips. We are adding more pest control tips all the time, so why not click on to check them out?
From Pest Control Tips back to Gardening Tips Home
|
