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Three Ways to Keep Your Organic Vegetable Garden Pest-Free

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One of the most frustrating problems that organic vegetable gardens have is pests. Organic vegetable gardens are more prone to pest infestation simply because chemicals and pesticides are not used in controlling their population. Without artificial pest control products, controlling pest infestation is going to be much harder. Not only is it going to be very time consuming, but it’s going to be very back-breaking as well. However, it can be done. You can control pest population through organic and natural means.

Choose New Plants Carefully

If you’re going to buy new plants from a nursery, you have to check it thoroughly first before making any purchase and bringing them home. You don’t want to introduce pests into your garden, and you most definitely don’t want to introduce sickly and diseased plants. Yes, they may look healthy at first glance, but if you don’t know what to look out for, then you might end up with a pest-infested organic vegetable garden. The new plants might also infect your healthy crops.

For this reason, examine the plants at the nursery carefully before purchasing them. Look at the leaves and make sure there are no dead spots. See to it, too, that the stems are not rotted and that they’re not carrying any insects.

In addition to these, it will also be very beneficial for you if you examine their roots thoroughly. See to it that they look firm and healthy. White roots usually mean healthy plants; while dark and spongy roots mean unhealthy plants.

Encourage the Growth of Natural Predators

Chemical pest control products can eliminate pests in the garden. They can quickly and easily get rid of pestiferous insects that do significant damage to plants; however, they can also get rid of beneficial insects. Now, these beneficial insects and other animals are the natural predators of pests. They feed on them, control their population, and help keep them out of your vegetable garden. Since chemicals can also kill the natural predators, then what’s stopping pests from invading your garden again once the chemicals wear off?

If you don’t want to leave your organic vegetable garden defenseless, then encourage the growth of these natural predators. Don’t get rid of the bushes. Instead, only give them a good trimming once in a while so they can still provide home to natural predators. The same should also be done to trees. Trees provide homes to birds, which are also natural predators of pests.

Use Natural Pest Repellant Products

You can also repel pests by making use of natural and organic pest repellant sprays. You can make these homemade sprays by combining water and ingredients found in your kitchen. For example, oil and garlic spray works very well to kill aphids as well as cabbage moths. It can also get rid of mildew fungi. Alcohol and oil spray can also kill a number of pestiferous insects, and you can make this by mixing isopropyl alcohol, vegetable oil, and water.

There are so many recipes for homemade sprays that you can find online. But if the pest infestation of your organic vegetable garden is severe, then hiring a pest control company that offers green solutions is a very good idea.

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Jennifer Dallman writes for a Peoria pest control company. Through this article, she hopes to teach readers how to care for their organic vegetable garden properly.






More garden safety tips

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As with just about anything you do around the home or in the workplace, it’s important to practice gardening safety when you garden. There’d be nothing worse than seriously injuring yourself while you’re gardening and then ending up being unable to maintain your lovely garden.

Health Precautions

Since one aspect of gardening is digging in the earth, possibly working with thorny plants (roses anyone?) and sometimes working with tools that have a little rust on them it’s important to make sure that your Tetanus shots are up to date. Most people only require a Tetanus booster every ten years, but if you are an avid gardener your doctor might recommend that you get booster shots a little more frequently.

You can get some nasty infections from the fungus on rose thorns or the bacteria in your garden soil so if you are working in the garden and end up getting slivers or thorns stuck in your skin try to remove them as soon as you are finished your tasks. Wash the puncture wounds and any other wounds that you acquire while gardening and then apply an antiseptic to prevent infection.

Tool Safety

One major aspect of gardening safety is the safe use of gardening tools. Be sure to store them in an area where children or possibly even pets can’t get at them. When you are using your gardening tools also try to be mindful of where each tool is located, especially if you have friends or family members out in the yard with you. I’m sure everyone can either remember stepping on a rake that was placed on the ground the wrong way and being hit in the face or watching someone else do it.

Perhaps store you smaller gardening tools in a gardening belt or tool belt so they are handy and close to you at all times. A bucket with a handle would also be a great place to store tools as you work in the garden.

Dull gardening tools often make worse cuts (on plants and on our skin!) so make sure your pruners and other cutting tools and blades are sharp and kept free of rust, and handle with care.

Chemical Safety

If you use chemicals in your garden – fertilizers, weed killers or other chemicals please make sure that you are storing them safely and using them as directed. Of course you can make it really easy on yourself and be like me and just not use any chemicals in the garden at all!

Some chemicals are quite toxic when being used and require that a mask and safety clothing be worn when applying them to your plants. Be sure to read the directions before starting to use a chemical in your yard and where appropriate protection if necessary. Also be sure that family members, friends and neighbors or pets aren’t nearby when using potentially toxic chemicals and keep pets and people away until the level of toxicity goes down whether that be an hour or a few days.

Also remember to read the label when it comes to disposing of used chemical bottles or left over chemicals. Sometimes you can simple put the containers in your recycling and other times you might have to drop them off at a special depot.

If you always make sure that you practice garden safety you, your family, pets and friends will be able to enjoy the time in the garden.

Don’t forget to read the first article on Gardening Safety that I published earlier this month in order to avoid injuring yourself while planting new plants in the garden and more.

Want a peek at my garden?

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Join Green Thumb Sunday

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In the middle of July (July 14th to be exact) I decide to take a couple of shots of the backyard, front yard and my planted boulevard garden. Would you like to see what my garden looks like this year?

Here’s a shot of the backyard:

My backyard garden

It’s not the best shot. We had our patio table umbrella down due to all the rain storms we’ve been having. Our table gets tipsy in the high winds and I don’t feel like going through the pain and expense of having to replace the table glass if it falls, so no umbrella in bad weather! The green tube on the table chairs is for collecting rain run off from the rain spout so that the area closest to the house doesn’t get flooded in a heavy downpour.

The tall tree on the left – well the tallest in our garden – is the Rose of Sharon tree. It’s in full bloom at this very moment, but two weeks ago when I took the picture it was only just starting to develop buds. It’s blooming a little early this year. I’ll get some pictures of it soon!

My box turtles are enjoying a daily snack on the flowers. They are edible. If you have a Rose of Sharon or a Hibiscus bush you might even want to try using the flowers in a salad or as a garnish.

There are a large number of plants in those flower beds! The main plants are of course roses, lavender, salvia, hostas, clematis, balloon flowers and annuals such as petunias and portulaca’s. If you’d like to see a not quite up to date list of all the plants we’re growing in our back, front and boulevard gardens have a peek at my What’s Growing page.

Just click on any of the pictures for a larger view.

I’m pleased with how my front yard is looking so far this year. Our Lab puppy, Midnight, did a lot of damage to the grass in the early spring so we’ve tried to keep her off our tiny front long over the last two months and the grass has been growing back nicely. We helped it out my reseeding of course.

my front yard and garden

Our puppy still tries to bite at the roses, grasses and some of the other plants in the front flower beds as she walks by, but mostly she just sniffs at the plants. It’s quite funny to see her smelling a rose. I think she likes them! At least if she ever tries to eat a rose I know they are non toxic!

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The front boulevard is coming along nicely. I don’t know if you remember my earlier posts about cleaning up the boulevard garden in the spring. We had to remove thick sunflower stalks and lots of weeds before I could plant some new plants this year. It was a mess! It’s nice and tidy now!

planted boulevard

The sunflowers are beginning to bloom as are the pink Dahlia, daylilies, malva and gayfeather. Cosmos have come up this year as well. I haven’t planted cosmos there for at least three years and they were absent the last two, but I guess there were still some viable seeds in the ground and they decided to grow this year so there are cosmo plants scattered among the main plants and they are beginning to bloom now as well.

I have Marigolds and Alyssum planted along the edge of the boulevard and we’ve trained a few Morning Glory vines to grow around the No Parking sign that mars my boulevard garden.  Our neighbors seems to enjoy our planted boulevard quite a bit.

Overall I’m quite pleased with how well my garden is doing this year. It’s been fairly hot this month, yet we’ve had a record amount of rain (and storms!), so the plants are getting lots of water, free nitrogen in the air from all the lightening storms and some good heat to get growing. I actually think I’ve only watered the garden twice this month. Yay! I’m saving money on water too!

I think I’ll make up some of my famous Alfalfa tea later today and let it brew for a week or so. The garden has been doing so well I haven’t thought of using my secret sauce (great organic fertilizer that alfalfa tea is!) on it yet this year, but at least one dose won’t hurt it at all.

How is your garden doing so far this summer? Has the weather been good for it? Have you been getting a lot of rain and like us haven’t had to water much?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

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