There are literally thousands of types of leaf-eating bugs, beetles and root-chewing grubs that may infest your yard, lawn and garden. But with due diligence and some home remedies and natural repellents, you can usually take care of the problem.
June 30, 2015
There are literally thousands of types of leaf-eating bugs, beetles and root-chewing grubs that may infest your yard, lawn and garden. But with due diligence and some home remedies and natural repellents, you can usually take care of the problem.
If you can't learn to live with the few that don't respond to environmentally friendly repellents, use chemicals only sparingly and always take precautions to protect yourself and beneficial insects that feed on other bugs.
It's the best way to make sure that surviving pests from last year's garden, which waited through winter in the soil, have a hard time finding the plants they most like to eat.
Combine 250 millilitres (one cup) each of water, vinegar and sugar in milk jugs hung from tree limbs, and you'll collect lots of insects that mistake the mixture for ripening fruit.
Make a fly trap from the same mixture and put it in jars whose lids have punched holes just wide enough for the flies to get through.
Too many June bugs? Although they don't eat plants, their larvae damage the lawn and they make spending evenings outdoors unpleasant.
Shiny silver mulch helps prevent thrips and other insects from finding your plants because as they pass by, they're confused by the light and fly away.
Use eggshells to repel a wide range of garden pests.
Use floating row covers, a garden fabric spread over plants, to prevent damage by secretive critters that you rarely see, such as the moths whose larvae become squash vine borers, or flies, whose eggs hatch into beet leaf miners.
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