Spring is the sweet spot for gardens and gardeners. Plants spring forth and the bugs, garden pests and mosquitos aren’t yet pesky. But once garden season is in full swing, we’re all scurrying to beat the bugs and critters, and preferably using organic pest control in the garden whenever possible.

You’ve worked hard in your garden nurturing of seedlings, planting and tending. When all that planning and effort is decimated by some of the many garden pests, and sometimes overnight it could be easier to throw up your hands in defeat. Or you might be ready to giving up on organic pest control for some more lethal and definite garden pest control.

Lose a crop or two to such marauders and some people are ready to give up, saying gardening is not worth it. We get it. Just about every crop we’ve ever grown has had some kind of issue to be resolved, so we’ve been there and can certainly relate to that frustration. But we love plants and growing our own food and herbs, so we can’t not garden.

For you it might have been that deer gnawed the bark of tender young fruit trees, or ate all your hostas. Perhaps your heads of lettuce went limp and lifeless overnight, from roots left bare by moles tunneling for grubs, or voles eating tender roots. Or, it might’ve been your lettuce ravaged by rabbits.

We’ve certainly lost plants and entire crops to deer. They ate all of our Jerusalem Artichokes (aka Sunchokes). Turns out the deer really like all visible parts of them. Deer also devoured our elderberry bushes.

These sunchokes pictured below aren’t ours, but it’s about how ours looked before the deer raid. One day they were there, the next they were all gone.

Where to Start With Organic Pest Control in the Garden?

The list of possible pests and remedies is too long to cover it all here. So this touches on some of the more common organic pest control options for some of the most common garden pests.

If you feel overwhelmed with pest problems in the thick of the garden season, take a look at this list of possible plant pests that follows. It’s quite long and chances are you’re only battling a few of these at any one time or season.

So we’re all for focusing on blessings over bothers, including that there are many natural remedies that work. Chances are that your garden is likely only plagued be a few of these, so that’s definitely something to celebrate and remediate with one or more organic pest control options.

Often, it does take more than one remedy. In fact, there’s a name for it: Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Just like a carpenter needs more than one tool, same for gardeners, gardening and organic pest control.

Don’t let setbacks get you down. Like life, gardening has its ups and downs. We win some and lose some, but we learn, adjust and keep on growing and getting better each year.

Gardeners are a resourceful and pragmatic bunch. Like a plant determined to grow, when things aren’t working we get to work to find another way.

~GardensAll

List of Garden Pests

• Anasa is a genus of leaf-footed bug in the Coreinae subfamily
  • Anasa tristis, aka Squash bug, is a major pest for squash & pumpkins
• Anthomyiidae – Muscoidea flies
• Ants
• Aphids
• Asparagus beetle
• Beetles
  • Asparagus beetle
  • Blister beetle
  • Colorado potato beetle
  • Cowpea seed beetle or weevil, the Callosobruchus maculatus, in the leaf beetle family, Chrysomelidae
  • Flea beetles
  • Japanese beetles
  • Mexican bean beetles
  • Woodboring beetles
• Birds
• Blister beetle
• Cabbage loopers
• Cabbage worm
• Caterpillars
• Cats
• Colorado Potato Beetles
• Corn earworms
• Cutworms
• Deer
• Dogs
• European corn borer
• Earwigs, aka pincher bugs
• Fall armyworm
• Flea beetles
• Flies
  • Muscoidea flies
• Gophers –  burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae
• Grasshoppers
• Leaf-footed bugs
  • Anasa, Coreinae subfamily
• Leafhoppers
• Leafminer
• Mealybugs
• Mexican bean beetles
• Mice
• Moles
• Moths
  • Codling moth
  • Five spotted hawk moth
• Muscoidea flies
• Opossums
• Rabbits
• Racoons
• Rodents
• Sawfly larvae – infected our dogwoods
• Scale bug
• Slugs and Snails
• Spider mites
• Squash bug (see also, Anasa tristis, alphabetically at top)
• Squirrels
• Stink bug
  • Brown marmorated stink bug in North America, damage to tree fruits & vegetables, family Pentatomidae
• Tarnished plant bug, Lygus lineolaris, family Miridae, attacks small fruits & vegetables
• Thrips
• Voles
• Whiteflies
• Worms
  • Cabbage worm
  • Fall armyworm

Prevention is Best

Before we get into the organic pest control, let’s summarize natural pest prevention tips from horticulturist, Manny Stockton.

Prevention is key. By using trap crops and having a diversity of flowers you will attract parasitoid and parasitic wasps, ladybird beetles, green lacewings and other beneficial insects. Regular scouting and monitoring as well as keeping plants healthy are important as well.
~Manny Stockton

Organic Pest Remedies

There are steps you can take, for garden pest control that will protect your plants from pests. With the best of these, once they’re in place, the problem is solved (or mostly resolved).

Yes, there’s no doubt that it takes more time up front to create the systems of organic pest control in the garden. But to not protect your garden would be akin to preparing to cook a meal by amassing and prepping all the ingredients, but not cooking them and instead, leaving the food to spoil.

You’ve done most of the hard work, now protect it by finishing off with some safety measures, “cooked in” to your garden plan.

When it comes to natural and organic pest control in the garden, a little time up front can save a lot of grief in the end.

List of Organic Pest Control Options

• Bacillus subtilis
• Bacillus thuringiensis (BT)
• Beauveria bassiana
• Boric acid – not for direct contact with organic food or crops
• Coniothyrium minitans
• Copper – when used as herbicides in these forms and according to label directions accumulation in the soil is minimized:
  • copper hydroxide
  • copper oxide
  • copper oxychloride
  • copper sulfate
• Corn gluten
• Cydia pomonella granulosis
• Diatomaceous earth
• Gibberellic acid
• Horticultural vinegar – We don’t recommend vinegar for it is known to be harmful to soil microbes and other creatures. You can read more about the issues and benefits of white vinegar here.
• Hydrogen peroxide – for powdery mildew
• Lime sulfur: Including calcium polysulfide
• Minerals such as elemental sulfur, bicarbonate, or kaolin clay – used successfully to rid our winter kuri squash of pickle worms.
• Myrothecium verrucaria
• Nematodes, beneficial nematodes
• Non-detergent insecticidal soaps: As a pesticide, fungicide, or algaecide for food crops; see homemade aphid spray recipe
• Oils, including:
  • petroleum
  • vegetable
  • fish oils
    Types include: 
    • dormant
    • suffocating
    • summer oils
• Peracetic acid: For control of fire blight bacteria. Permitted in hydrogen peroxide formulations at no more than 6% concentrate.
• Pheromones and pheromone traps
• Plant-derived substances such as: 
  • neem – (we use this for squash vine borers prevention)
  • caraway oil
  • seed fennel
  • quassia
  • ryania
• Ryania/Ryanodine
• Sabadilla
• Spinosad
• Streptomycin sulfate and tetracycline
• Sticky traps
• Vitamin D3: As a rodenticide

SOURCE: AgDaily.com; ECFR.gov

Natural Slug Repellent

Like many in the GardensAll.com audience, we are keen on organic gardening. At one point a period of rain brought on a rash of snails and garden slugs, ranging in size from that of a pencil lead to nearly three inches. Wouldn’t it be great if they just stuck to one leaf!

But no, the slugs and snail were either picky eaters, sample many leaves, or binger eaters and devoured many leaves practically (or actually), overnight.

Getting in the garden early in the morning and picking snails off of leaves seemed helpful but not entirely effective. So we resorted to spreading slug pellets.

We used the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), the certified kind, in and around the rows,^[1]https://www.omri.org/. The badly shot-gunned leaves were removed and we stepped up our policing of all squash plants daily. The Sluggo, clearly did a great job of significantly reducing the slug and snails infesting our squash plants.

See also, how to get rid of garden slugs.

Slug pellets help reduce and get rid of garden slugs and snails.

Flea Beetles

Worse than slugs, that same summer, our tomato plants began showing signs of flea beetles. The lower leaves are riddled with pinprick holes and a few of the little pinheads have been seen and squished, but mostly they scatter and are hard to combat.

See also, battling the bad beetles.

Flea beetles are aptly named. They have strong hind legs that help them jump and quickly scatter.

Pest Free and Pesticide Free

We really want to keep the garden pest free AND pesticide free, using natural gardening methods. So after doing a broad search on treatments, we decided to declare biological warfare and deploy beneficial insects and nematodes.

Beneficial Nematodes for Organic Pest Control

Microbes for Biological Teamwork

My mother-in-law, who lived in Hawaii for many years, almost freaked out when told we were actually adding nematodes to the garden. She recalled that they were the bane of any in-ground gardener, and if one were to grow anything, the ground had to be fumigated to KILL the nematodes first. Chances are, that would also do damage to beneficial organisms.

The key word here is “beneficial”. Indeed, there are “bad” nematodes that do serious damage to plants, but there are good guy nematodes (wonder if they wear white hats?) who attack the bad garden bugs, including flea beetles.

The killing agent is the bacterial flora they have in their gut that invades the target and kills it off in short order. ^[2]https://www.mastergardeners.org/publications/nematodes/beneficial_nematodes.html

What do beneficial nematodes kill?

Beneficial Nematodes Get Rid of:

• Grubs and the larval or grub stage of Japanese Beetles
• Northern Masked Chafer
• European Chafer
• Rose Chafer
• Fly larvae
• Oriental Beetles
• June Beetles
• Flea beetles
• Bill-bugs
• Cut-worms
• Army worms
• Black Vine Weevils
• Strawberry Root Weevils
• Fungus Gnats, Sciarid larvae
• Sod Web-worms
• Girdler
• Citrus Weevils
• Maggots and other Dip-tera
• Mole Crickets
• Iris Borer
• Root Maggot
• Cabbage Root Maggot
• Carrot Weevils

As you can see, flea beetles are on their hit list.^[3]https://www.nematodes.com/

So in search of an organic pest control in the form of friendly nematodes, we found a well reviewed product on Amazon, enough to treat up to 3000 square feet of surface area. We deployed our nematodes and definitely experienced a decline in the nefarious insect population.

While the flea beetle population diminished after introducing the beneficial insects and nematodes, we also used other products like insecticidal soaps and sprays as well. So we can’t say how much of the positive results are clearly attributable to the nematodes.

The war was on, and it was more important to protect our crops than to know exactly which remedy was the most effective. So we are adding all of these natural pest controls to our arsenal.

In the future, when we can catch it early on, we may try one remedy first to gauge how it does alone. Meanwhile, our first priority is to protect our precious plants with the least harm to the biodynamic environment, so IPM to the rescue!

Foiling the Furry Garden Pests

For other garden pests, another form of organic pest control is to erect barriers. One of the best protectors against burrowing critters is a combination of hardware cloth (wire mesh) and cardboard, which you can see here in our raised garden beds article.

Each year we’ve been gradually redoing all of our raised beds to include the layer of wire mesh hardware cloth and cardboard. However, that isn’t enough, because while moles and voles are burrowing creatures, they can surface and climb over the sides of a low garden bed and dive into the bed to tunnel.

Moles!

For several years we’ve battled moles. They can destroy a crop in a day too by undermining the dirt under the roots, leaving them dangling, unprotected, to starve and wither in the tunnel it dug. That’s how we found most of our lettuce one morning: wilted with roots unearthed in a tunnel below them.

When a very promising year of production ends up with a piddling handful of vegetables, it’s certainly discouraging. Nowadays we have the luxury of driving to the store when that happens. Imagine our ancestors. Their lives often depended on it.

So the moles dig tunnels as they search for insects, grubs and their favorite earthworms to eat. And guess where they find the most and best of their food? Yep… in your healthy garden soil and around your healthy garden plants. The mole tunnels alone can cause a crop to fail by leaving the plant roots suspended in the air of a tunnel and not connected to dirt and moisture.

Then the voles can come along and make use of the tunnel, and further destroy plants by eating the roots, shoots and sprouts. You can read more on the difference between voles and moles here.

Fencing is best deer repellent as well as for keeping out dogs, cats, and rabbits.

Contributions from the Community

Japanese Beetle Control

From our Planting for Retirement Facebook Group: Missy Mueller, Sage Raven Naturals had this advice for Japanese Beetles and other garden pests:
One part cedar chips (in pet bedding section) and 4 parts hot/boiling water. Steep until cool, strain & pour into a big sprayer. We put the used cedar around the base of the plants and spray the leaves etc with the tea.

We have just a regular family-sized garden, but it works for so many things. Squash beetles, aphids, those huge tomato worms etc. Everything seems to hate it.

It’s all we’ve had to use for the last 2 years. We re-spray the plants after a heavy rain or if it’s been a couple weeks and we see a bug trying to be brave & sneak back in.

Awesome! Thanks for sharing, Missy! We’ve added cedar to our squash beds this year to help with the squash vine borers and that’s helping. We still have them… they went further up the stem, which means they did have to travel through the cedar, but didn’t hang out there. Now we’re definitely going to try the cedar water spray to cover the reset of the plants. We’ll keep you posted.

Here’s another article on toads for garden pest control for organic gardens, you may wish to peruse.

As always, we invite your comments and tips on what and how you’ve kept the intruders at bay. You can send an email or join the conversations on the Gardens All Facebook page.

In It for the Long Haul

Establishing a healthy biodynamic garden takes patience over time and likely won’t just happen in a season. Gardening is hard work, and many a newbie — and experienced gardener alike — go through the feeling of throwing up our hands and giving up.

But it is also a great joy, in fact gardening therapy is a real remedy for many ailments. Once you develop the habit and custom of gardening and enjoy the fruits of your successful crops, you’ll get to the place where you can’t imagine not gardening.

You may enjoy this permaculture documentary of The Biggest Little Farm that follows the tumultuous journey of a young city couple in their dream to establish an organic farm and homestead. Like gardening its include both ecstasy and agony.

See an a satellite image of a 500 acre organic farm and how it stands out in a see of non-organic farmland.

Study Organic Gardening in Winter

Study up in winter and you’ll be prepared come the chaos of summer pest attacks.

Come summer, the garden is in full swing, which is awesome, but it also means you’re super busy! There’s lots to do, with weeds and garden pests attacking plants while mosquitoes attack you.

See natural mosquito control.

Meanwhile, you’re trying to tend and protect your plants from pests while keeping up with your life as well as all the life in the garden. It can be hectic and even overwhelming.

During such times it’s easy to give in to whatever is easiest and fastest. But that’s when you need to remember that you’re in it for the long haul. You’re building an entire organic ecosystem of nature in harmony.

You’re in it for the long haul. You’re gradually building an entire organic ecosystem of nature in balance.

Natural and Organic Pest Controls Aren’t All Harmless

When it comes to garden pests, just be careful in your use of natural remedies as well. Even organic pest control in the garden can be harmful if you’re not careful and informed.

When our plants are dying, it’s easy to react and pull out the toxic chemicals, and everything else we can find, to protect our precious plants and food. But, there are always consequences.

For example, natural garden weed control often includes white vinegar. However, killing one bad thing (or garden nuisance) may accidentally kill another good thing, such as frogs and lizards.

“When we kill off the natural enemies of a pest, we inherit their work.”
-Carl Barton (CB) Huffaker, biologist, ecologist, agricultural entomologist, 1914-1995

The Seventh Generation Principle

So take your time. Be patient with yourself, your garden and garden nemesis. Every loss is a lesson that teaches us what not to do and what else to do better.

There’s always next time, and unlike our pioneer ancestors, a failed crop usually isn’t a matter of life and death for us. Rather, it is a matter of better informed, prepared and armed next time

Consider the Wisdom of this Famous Native American Saying:

In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.

From the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy