Organic Pest Control in your Garden

Family Food Garden may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page.

Does Organic Pest Control gardening sound like an unattainable dream?

To many gardeners, organic pest control might, but achieving organic pest control is all about creating the working ecosystem.

Organic pest control means creating healthy soil, using companion planting, learning what the good bugs and bad bugs are and attracting predatory ones.

I’ve also listed some naturally homemade pesticides here.

Tips for Organic Pest Control

Here are some general tips for using an organic approach to managing pests in your garden.

The one thing to note with any organic management is that it takes time, you might not see the effects immediately.

People tend to reach for sprays because it’s fast, and even though can buy or make organic and natural ones (here’s a great DIY one from reformation acres), you should still practice long term strategic methods for organic pest management.

Tips for long-term organic pest control

• Grow companion planting herbs and flowers to deter pests away from your crops or attract them away from eating them (see the chart at the end of the post).
• Attract the good bugs that eat the pests using flowers and plants they love. We always encourage the wasps to eat cabbage moth caterpillars and found a great reduction in damage. Many flowers attract hoverflies, lacewigs and ladybugs. I absolutely LOVE the wildflower blends from West Coast Seeds on attracting beneficial insects. I’m sowing the beneficial insect blend this season for attracting lacewings, hover flies and ladybird beetles to help control aphids, thrips, and caterpillars.

• Use constant vigilance and hand-picking for the larger pests like squash bugs and slugs (yuck, I know, but it’s one of the best tactics, especially if you can’t keep ducks and chickens).
• Educate yourself. The more you know about bugs in your garden the better understanding you’ll have on which ones are bad and which are good. There’s a great book below (affiliate link) if you wish to learn more.

• Use beneficial helpers like ducks or chickens for bug and slug control (permaculture!). We have a chicken run (moat) around most of the garden for bug control.
• Purchase the good bugs that eat the bad and add them to your garden. A lot of places sell praying mantis or ladybugs for example. You’re still better attracting them than bringing them in. I’ve heard one person say that these bugs aren’t a native species and can interfere with wild populations. However, if you need a bug fix and have none in your yard at all it can help. Check your local area so you can order beneficial bugs.

Good Bugs, Bad Bugs

• Use hoop tunnels. Using tunnels with insect netting (affiliate link) or light weight row cover during the peak infestations (for example when the bad bug lays eggs) has great success at deterring pests short term.

Insect netting with a hoop tunnel (affiliate link)

Here’s a handy chart from eReplacementParts gardening and lifestyle blog

Source: eReplacementParts.com

What have been your most successful organic pest control methods?

Family Food Garden

My name is Isis Loran, creator of the Family Food Garden. I’ve been gardening for over 10 years now and push the limits of our zone 5 climates. I love growing heirlooms & experimenting with hundreds of varieties, season extending, crunchy homesteading and permaculture.