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Tips For Keeping Your Garden Beautiful And Healthy

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Your garden should be able to add beauty to your home and provide you a good view of nature. It should be something that can give you peace and tranquility when you want to relax and have some peace of mind. However, your garden won’t give you all these if it’s dirty and pest-ridden, nor will it be pleasing to the eye if it’s full of weeds and weak and dying plants.

 

If you want to have a beautiful and healthy garden, then here are some tips worth following.

Buying Plants

Let’s say you’ve gotten rid of all weak, sickly, and dying plants and you want to replenish your garden with new ones, what should you do first?

At the nursery, you need to check the plants you’re going to purchase. You need to make sure that they’re healthy and that they’re not carrying any pests or diseases that can infect healthy plants.

You also need to check the roots and the leaves. Make sure that the roots look and feel firm, and see to it that its color is white. If you notice that the roots look dark and mushy, avoid it. It’s not going to be a good buy. The stems and leaves may look healthy, but its roots are saying otherwise. In a few days, its rotted root system is going to kill it.

As for the leaves, see to it that its color is vibrant. Avoid plants that have dead spots on its leaves, and avoid those, too, that have holes.

Insect Damage

Pestiferous insects can do a lot of damage to plants. They feed on the leaves, stems, and even the roots. They even feed on the flowers. Not only can they cause extensive damage to plants, but they can also spread infection and diseases. In the end, these pestiferous insects are going to leave you with weak and dying plants, plus an unsightly garden as well.

If you want to keep pestiferous insects away, then you have to allow beneficial insects to stay. These beneficial insects are the natural predators of the pestiferous ones, some examples of which include green lacewing, damsel bug, minute pirate bug, ladybug, bees, spiders, beetles, etc.

Having beneficial insects in your garden can help keep plants healthy and beautiful since they prey on pests. Unfortunately though, if you’re using chemical products and pesticides for your garden, these beneficial bugs are oftentimes killed together with the pestiferous ones. Their numbers dwindle drastically that, when the population of the pestiferous insects climbs back up, there are a few left of the beneficial ones to control them.

For this reason, choose natural and organic pest control methods first to spare the population of the beneficial insects.

Organic Insect Repellents

As mentioned earlier, if you’re going to use pest control methods, it’s wiser to use organic and natural ones. You can even make your own homemade insect sprays. They work wonders to control pest population; plus, they’re safer for humans, pets, and the environment as well.

For garden pests though that can’t be controlled through these means, you can get in touch with a pest control company to get rid of them for you. Just see to it though that the company’s offering green solutions for pest problems.

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Jennifer Daggett, a blogger and freelance content provider, writes for http://Admiralpest.com. She usually gives tips for controlling pests the natural and organic way.






Insects on bearded iris leaves

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A visitor to As the garden grows told me that they’d seen some tiny red bugs on their bearded Iris leaves. Blasting the plant with water didn’t help because the bugs came back out again once the leaves dried off.

Spraying the plants with a blast of water was actually a good move and it can be helpful with many types of insect infestations. The insects that she saw were probably aphids. They love new growth on plants and you’ll often find them on tender young leaves or flower buds. They suck the plants juices and can get unsightly if they aren’t controlled.

Aphids breed quite quickly. If you have plants that are infested by aphids you should give them a blast of water daily. You might also add a drop or two of dishwashing liquid to a spray bottle and spray the areas of the plant that are heavily infested. The soap will smother the aphids.

Whatever you do you do not want to kill any ladybugs. Ladybugs love eating aphids and they are beneficial insects in your garden. So, if you use the soapy water method try to watch where you are spraying and avoid hitting any ladybugs.

Aphids and Whiteflies in the garden

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Each garden and therefore each gardener is faced with pests that plague their plants from time to time. It’s something that we have to learn how to deal with, and when possible learn to control those pesky pests.

Some plants such as honeysuckle, citrus trees and other flowering shrubs and vines are infested each year with aphids and whiteflies. How can you control some of these pests naturally?

Well, whiteflies can be a real challenge. Planting marigolds near or around plants that frequently get infestations of whiteflies might help. Marigolds secrete a substance around their roots that is absorbed by nearby plants and this helps to repel the insects. This might now work for large shrubs and trees though.

Whiteflies have several natural enemies. Get to know the bugs in your garden. Some of them are beneficial. Insects such as lacewings, big-eyed bugs, minute pirate bugs and a tiny wasp called Encarsia are natural predators of whiteflies. Avoid using pesticides in the area as that will kill off these beneficial bugs that otherwise would find and attack the whiteflies.

Aphids are a big problem in my garden each year. They love my honeysuckle – particularly my Harlequin Honeysuckle for some reason. They also thrive on the newly developing leaves and flower buds of my roses.

When an aphid infestation is really bad I get one of my spray bottles and add a couple of drops of dish washing liquid to the water in the bottle. I then go out and spray the affected areas of each plant with this mixture. By selectively spraying the affected areas of the plants I don’t bother the many other insects that are in my garden- many of which are beneficial. I find that for really bad infestations I have to spray the affected plants with this soapy mixture two or three times in one week. After that the aphids are usually gone.

Like the whitefly, aphids have many natural enemies as well. One of the most important enemies of the aphid are the various species of parasitic wasp that lay their eggs inside aphids. Other predators that feed on aphids are lady bugs or the lady beetle as it’s known in some parts, lacewing and syrphid fly.

There are a number of mail order companies, and some nurseries, that sell a huge variety of beneficial insects for the garden. You might think about purchasing some of these insects to help control your whitefly or aphid problems.

I’ve purchased ladybugs in the past. 2000 I believe! I tried to put them on the plants that I knew the aphids and other pests enjoyed bothering. The lady bugs stayed in my garden for the most part for a day or two but then dispersed throughout the neighborhood. I do think that at the time they stayed long enough to control my pest problem.

If anyone has any other suggestions for controlling whiteflies or aphids in the garden I’d love to hear your suggestions. Please leave a comment.

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