Cheap and Organic Techniques to Keep Insects Away From Your Garden

Jeannine L Davidoff

Despite your best efforts, your garden may unintentionally be inviting opportunistic pests are ready to take advantage of weak or stressed plants by setting up residence where it´s easy to find food. Here there are some cheap an organic ways to keep your garden alive and pest free.

Rotate crops
Moving each crop to a different part of the garden every year is a simple but effective way of foiling pests. How does it work? Many insects leave pupae or eggs in near their favorite host plants at the end of the season. This helps the young when they emerge in the spring to find their favorite food nearby. But if their happens to be on the other side of the garden, there is a good chance that they´ll starve before they find it. Diseases can also build up in the soil to infect the same crops each year. Crop rotation is an easily implemented solution for that problem, specially recommended for annual vegetables and flowers that can be replanted each year.

Don't overfertilize

Too many people make the mistake of believing that the more fertilizer you apply, the better the result is. Unfortunately, excess nutrients are as harmful to plants as nutrient deficiency is. Excess nitrogen, for example, causes delicacy for aphids and spider mites because it's easy to puncture and consume. An imbalance of phosphorus encourages egg production in spider mites. The easiest way to prevent nutrient imbalances is to provide nutrients in the form of organic matter and organic fertilizers, which make nutrients available gradually.

Find the right place for the right plant
Choose the best location for each plant, taking into account its particular needs for water, sunlight, and nutrients. Plants emit a chemical signal when they are weakened, and pests get the message loud and clear. Although experts continue to debate the degree to which stress affects human health, in the plant kingdom, no such quibbling exists. When plants don't get their needs met, they become stressed, and the longer the stressful situation continues, the greater the decline in plant health. Even a healthy plant can fall prey to pests, of course, but it will be better able to survive the attack than a plant that is already weakened by stress.

Avoid opening wounds

Damaged foliage or bark provides an ideal entry point for diseases and insects much like an open skin wound. Even something as seemingly insignificant as torn leaves caused can provide an opening for pest invasion.Even though you can't manipulate weather at will weather, you can protect plants from potential damage caused by rotary tillers and string trimmers. By encircling perennial beds, tres and shrubs with a wide band of mulch you´ll keep power equipment away from the plants. While mowing is also important to avoid leaving ragged edges on grass blades which are caused by blunt blades so make sure that mower blades are sharp.

Confuse pests with mixed plantings

When you combine and scatter different types of plants in your garden instead of planting large blocks of each crop it makes harder for insects to find them all.This make diseases less likely to spread and also confuse the chemical receptors used by insects to help them find their favourite foods.

Hope you find this information useful, for any questions mail me at info@familyorganicgarden.com or visit my website, http://www.familyorganicgarden.com

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