Its almost time to get your hands dirty and put your green thumb to good use. Gardening can be relaxing, rewarding and certainly beautify your property. As homeowners, keeping bugs and rodents out of your home can be challenging, but so can keeping them out of your garden. Although there are many pests good for the garden there are also, pests to keep away from your garden.
Slugs
These slow-moving insects are very attracted to beer. Fill an empty tuna or cat-food can with beer and bury it in your garden soil up to its rim. Overnight, slugs will move into the beer and drown. You can throw out the entire can in the morning and replace it with a fresh batch.
Snails
Put a board or two on the garden soil, and snails will take shelter in the damp shade beneath them. Pick up the boards and scrape the creatures into the trash. Always water your garden in the morning. If the soil is dry at night, critters like slugs and snails will be less active.
Earwigs
In the evening roll up sheets of wet newspaper and lay them around the garden. At sunrise, earwigs will crawl inside the wet pages to take shelter. Collect the papers before they dry out, bugs and all. Don’t throw the newspapers into your trash cans, or the earwigs will soon escape and make their way back to the garden. Either burn the papers and bugs, shake the earwigs into a toilet or sink and flush them down the drain, or tie up the papers and bugs tightly inside a plastic bag-with absolutely no openings-and put them in the garbage can.
Aphids
Make your own citrus-rind spray by grating the rind of one lemon or orange and combine it with 1 pint (500 ml) boiling water. Let it steep overnight, then strain through a coffee filter to remove the bits of rind. Add the mixture to a spray bottle, and spray the aphids on the leaves of the plants. Make sure to spray underneath the leaves, where many aphids gather. Reapply every four to seven days as long as the aphid problem persists.
Grubs and Japanese Beetles
Milky spore is a natural powder that will kill grubs so they won’t develop into beetles and doesn’t harm other organisms. It can take a year or more for the spore to become established in your soil, but once the spore is established, it keeps working for a decade or more.
Learn how to identify pests with our pest identification guide. If your are in need of pest control in Albany NY or pest control in Saratoga NY be sure to contact a licensed professional Thomas Pest Services is proud to be a local, family owned pest management company in Albany NY with 3rd Generation Experience can TRUST! Contact us for a free home evaluation!