If you have a lovely garden of flowers or / and vegetables, you can be sure that you will not be the sole one appreciating it.
However, the vast majority of the others will be unwelcome. Insects are bound to be eying up your plants with evil intentions as far as you are concerned.
If you cherish your flowers and vegetables you will need to do something to deal with them. How seriously you take this task is naturally up to you, but a garden will soon be overrun if you do nothing at all.
There are basically two methods of dealing with garden insects: there are items that you can use, so-called mechanical methods and spray killers such as pesticide and fungicide. These two ways offer an infinite variation of combinations to deal with backyard pests.
A good example of a mechanical course of action of protection is the covered frame. A covered frame is a five sided box with no bottom. You stand it over your plants particularly whilst they are young. The top of the box can be perspex, glass or fly screen.
The plastic, perspex or glass top is useful for protecting the plant from frost as well as pests, whereas the fly screen will let the elements in but protect the plant from bugs and birds. They might be thought of as winter and summer protection respectively.
A cheaper way of protecting young plants from perhaps cut-worm, is to cut the top and bottom off a drinks container and then cut the body into three rings. Place a ring around a plant and push it at least an inch into the ground, leaving an inch or two showing. Leave the cut edges ragged and rough to ward off slugs, snails and cut-worms from scrambling over it.
If that is too much trouble, you could use plastic bottle rings or cardboard treated with oil – maybe WD40 – which will ward off pests too as the above and stop it getting ruined by rain. . If you would like to spray your fruit, you will need a spray-gun. You can either get one with a compressor or you could pump it up yourself. The latter are much cheaper, do a decent job and provide more exercise.
The chemicals used in these sprays is quite corrosive, so buy a spray tank that will resist this. Aluminium, stainless steel or brass are the best, but you ought to take advice relying on the chemicals used.
Cheaper models will rust away fairly quickly. Make sure you may purchase extension rods for spraying into trees if you want to.
Slugs and snails are not keen on travelling across rough terrain, so you ought to save all your egg shells, crush them into a coarse grit and lay them in a ring around your plants.
The weather will break them down, but they contain nutrients that are healthy for the garden anyway.
If you have an ants nest just where you do not need one, wait until the spring or early summer and lay a piece of slate or tile on top of the entrance to the nest. Put an upturned flowerpot on top of this and cover the hole in the base of it.
After a couple of dry days, the ants will have brought a few hundred eggs up onto the slate. You can eat these – Thais say they are an aphrodisiac – or you may feed them to your fish. After a couple of weeks of this the ants will get discouraged and will move their nest elsewhere.
Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on several subjects, but is at present involved with bed bug covers for mattresses. If you would like to know more, visit our website at Bugs Infestation.