How to Keep Pests Down Without Reaching for the Spray
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People come in with a photo of something on their tomatoes wanting to know what'll kill it, and about half the time my answer is that I wouldn't kill that one, because it's the thing eating the ones you actually have a problem with.
Wasps are the obvious example and nobody wants to hear it. They feed their young on caterpillars and aphids and whitefly, which is the exact list of things chewing through your lettuce, so a nest down the back of the block is doing a job you'd otherwise be doing yourself with a bottle. If it's nowhere near the door and nowhere near where the kids play, I'd leave it. If it's over the back step, that's different, and that's a job for someone licensed rather than a can and a bit of optimism.
The same goes for a lot of what turns up. Ladybirds are eating aphids. Hoverflies look like little wasps and are eating aphids too. Spiders in the beans are earning their keep. If you blanket spray the lot you get a clean patch for about a fortnight and then the aphids come back first, because they breed faster than anything that eats them, and now there's nothing left to slow them down.
When you do need to spray, spray the actual problem rather than the whole garden, do it late in the day when the bees have knocked off, and go for something that breaks down quickly. We keep EcoPest oil for the soft-bodied stuff and it's about as gentle as spraying gets. Snail pellets are the other one worth having, because slugs and snails aren't a balance problem, they're just a problem.
The other half of it isn't spray at all. A plant that's fed and watered properly shrugs off a bit of insect damage, and a stressed one gets flogged. So if the same bed gets hammered every year, I'd look at the soil before I looked at the shelf.
That's how I'd go about it, and you can completely ignore me if you've got a way that works. Come and have a yak with us if you want to bring a photo in, because it's a lot easier to tell you what something is when we can actually see it.
Shop related products
- Multicrop EcoPest Oil Insect Spray. For aphids, mites and the soft-bodied stuff, without wiping out everything else.
- Brunnings Garden Compost with Seaweed 25L. The soil half of the answer.
- Neutrog 1L Seamungus Liquid Concentrate. A feed for a bed that keeps getting hit.
- Multicrop 30g Kocide Blue Extra Fungicide. For when the problem turns out to be fungal rather than an insect.
The rest of the pest control gear is in the garden centre.
Keep reading
- 5 Mistakes to Avoid When Growing Tomatoes in the Summer Heat
- A Beginner's Guide to Building Good Soil for Your Vegetable Garden
Candeece. Anything that eats mozzies drinks free at my place.
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