Organic pest control

Pest control can sometimes be a challenging task for lifestylers, even for some established and experienced ones. If done organically, it can prevent your soil from exposure to highly contaminating chemicals, at the same time providing immense health benefits.

Though a bit challenging, organic pest control is easily achieved with some careful and coordinated planning. It’s an exciting option that allows you to not poison nature and not chemically killing the organisms that can assist in organic pest control and pollination, and have a positive effect on your health as well as that of the environment.

To start with, it’s important to understand that having a healthy organic soil is an easy way to reduce pests. Plants tend to thrive in an organically rich environment, as it supports them to fight off pests on their own. Cultivating the soil finely around slug prone plants like lettuce, potatoes and seedlings helps to expose the soil pests to predators such as birds and frogs, etc. To be able to distinguish the pests from the useful animals such as larva of ladybirds also pays in the long run.

Create a pest unfriendly environment around more vulnerable areas with the use of plastic sheeting or newspaper. But these steps have to be considered at the planning stages to avoid any risks involved. Since layers of soft, moist organic debris provide cover and food for slugs and other pests, cleaning away organic debris regularly can be quite a helpful step in this direction.

Planting native species, whenever possible, is a great way to keep away pests as native plants are better protected by their own immune systems and their relationships with other plants and animals in the area. Growing pest resistance varieties of plants and trying mixing more than one variety in the same row can also help to reduce pest attacks. Plant growth can sometimes be timed to miss a pest's life-cycle e.g. delaying carrot sowing to miss the carrot root fly’s attacks.

One of the best organic methods of pest control is covering the plants, by using fine mesh, against all sorts of animal pests like tiny flea beetle, cabbage butterfly, carrot root fly, etc. Besides, you can take steps to invite natural pest predators by growing plants that attract ladybirds and hoverflies, and providing nesting sites on your block of land for small insect eating birds.

All these methods have to be applied in combination and after carefully analysing your pest control requirements, to get the most out of your organic pest control plans. If followed consistently, they can be highly rewarding in terms of their long term environmental, commercial and health benefits.

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