Tips for a Healthy Vegetable Garden

The healthiest and best way to save money in today economy is to plant a garden for you and your family.

Organic Gardens

With all of the talk these days about the chemicals being used on our produce it’s no wonder more and more people are leaning towards Organic Gardens.

Organic gardening starts with the soil, it takes approximately 7 years to be able to deem produce organic. This means that no pesticides or chemicals were used either on the plants or in the soil for that length of time, this in turn makes the soil and anything grown in it “clean” and therefore can be deemed Organic.

Safe Pest Control Tips

Pest control while an important step in any healthy garden must be done with utmost consideration to safety; safety in terms of the plants, animals and humans. This holds especially true for those with vegetable and organic gardens. The main purpose of growing vegetables organically will be defeated if they become tainted with pest control chemicals.

Here are some long-term tips to make pest control less damaging and more environmentally friendly.

1. Get Physical

This is the hands on approach to pest control, picking grubs off by hand, creating barriers and traps and plugging holes. Snails can be found hiding in damp places under rocks and towrds the base of those plants with straplike foliage.

2. Add more bugs!

Encourage predatory insects such as green lacewings and dragonflies to feed on aphids and other pests that attack your plants. You can do this by placing a shallow bowl of water in the garden. Dragonflies especially will hover around water. Bacterial insecticides such as B. thuringiensis could also be used against caterpillars.

3. As a last resort you can turn to chemical pest control.

Organic pest control methods can be successful and the ingredients for many of the recipes can be found in the kitchen cupboards. If chemical sprays are really necessary, try and find the least-toxic. These include insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils, dehydrating dusts, etc.

4. Try Home Remedies

Recipes for alternative pest control include the following:

Against Green Aphids and Mites – Mix 1 tablespoon of liquid soap and a cup of vegetable oil. Dilute a teaspoon of this solution in a cup of water and spray on aphids and mites.

Against Cockroaches – Dusts of boric acid can be applied to cracks or entry points of these insects. Bay leaves on pantry shelves could also help in warding off these critters.

Make sure that the chemicals you use are made specifically for the insects you are targeting.