KEEPING PESTS AWAY FROM YOUR GARDEN WITHOUT USING (QUITE POSSIBLY) CARCINOGENIC PESTICIDES
The first thing you can do to keep the bugs away is to get yourself some good bugs that will eat up the bad bugs. For instance, Ladybugs. Their larvae eat aphids. You can order them from several organic garden places on the Internet. Until they arrive, spray every part of aphid-infested plants with well diluted soapy water. Rinse with clear water. Praying mantises eat flies and aphids (and their husbands, but that's a story for another, delightful, time). Lacewings are an excellent predatory insect that feeds on aphids, spider mites, leafhoppers, thrips and whitefly. Lacewings can be attracted by planting Ceanothus (wild lilac) and Prunus (cherry and plum) species. Or you can buy 'em from Gardens Alive or any other supplier, as well as Trichgramma wasps, whose good larvae eat bad larvae like apple worms and corn borers..
Praying Mantis Green Lacewing
Ladybug Trichogramma wasp
Another way to keep the bad bugs from showing up at all is guardian plants. Grow mint to repel ants, basil to keep the flies and mosquitoes away. Marigolds make the garden colorful, and their odor wards off many pests. Nasturtiums are pretty and repel aphids, squash bugs, those striped cucumber beetles, and other melon eaters. You can eat the peppery-tasting leaves too, they're pretty good in salads! Onions and garlic are also great deterrents to pests that would like to break in and steal organic produce but don't put them near anything from the bean family (like peas or lima beans). Most bugs don't like asters, and they're pretty and easy to grow. Garlic is supposed to repel Japanese beetles, which is certainly better than buying one of those yellow bag-traps which actually ATTRACT them to your garden. They totally devoured all my hollyhocks last year. Supposedly, Four O'Clocks draw Japanese beetles like a magnet which then dine on the foliage. The foliage is pure poison to them and they won't live to have dessert! It is important to mention that Four O'clock are also poisonous to humans. Please be careful where you plant them if you have kids. They are a beautiful annual plant (but they self seed pretty well too) growing from 2-3 feet high with a bushy growth form.
Marigolds Four O'clocks
Nasturtiums Garlic plant
Asters
And finally, tomatoes and basil grow very well together, they don't even know why but both plants benefit, strength and flavor-wise..
You can make your own anti-bug spray by taking a couple of real hot jalapeno peppers, dicing them up (wear gloves and don't touch your eye for Gods sake), then putting the diced peppers in the blender with about 2 cups of warm water and a few drops of soap. Blend til, uh, blended. Don't use your vegetable sprayer because you will clog it up, just use a regular atomizer from the dollar store. Spray all leaves liberally.
For birds they make these awesome large yellow balloons that have huge eyes painted on them. The birds think they are predators (you will too, at first) and stay away. Or you can buy a fake owl and fill it with sand. This never worked in my yard, I could actually hear the birds laughing at it.
Creepy eye baloon Fake owl
Moles are reputedly put off by castor bean plants, which can grow pretty high. Also poisonous to humans, which is why I never grew 'em when my kids were little. I bought some seeds this year and will let you know how they work.
Castor bean plant
Groundhogs? I have to apologize for making you think I'm all about organic gardening, but a 12-gauge shotgun is not very organic. However this is my solution. I guess you could get a Havahart trap and "release them into the wild" but the "wild" is probably just over the hill from someone ELSE's garden. So, blammo.
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