Common Garden Pests and How to Control them
Everyone admires and enjoys a well kept garden and we are all quite aware that those picturesque and landscaped front and / or back gardens can be quite costly to achieve both in finance and time / effort. Gardens are there, for those fortunate enough to have them, so to enjoy as part of our day to day lives though also to serve many purposes from parking to storage for ourselves and an open space for our pets too.
From lawns to patios, swimming pools to allotments, what we have in our gardens can vary vastly. Gardens can be an exciting addition to your home and even the smallest of plots can be magically transformed in to a cover shot for any homes and gardens magazine.
We can be quite economical in how we manage our gardens and they can be designed so as to take up the minimum amount of maintenance, other options sees a constant attendance required of us from pruning to mowing, cleaning to painting and much more.
How much does it cost to call in a professional garden designer to work on your garden? ‘For small projects, up to £12,000, the cost of hiring a garden designer can represent around 20% of your budget whereas for medium projects (up to £60,000) it can be estimated for 15%. This will likely drop to 10% for larger projects. Remember: designers fees should be offset against the cost savings they can provide, and the additional value added to your home!’ source designfor-me
For those of us that spend a little bit of time in the garden and looking to keep things at the very least acceptable visually, then we will likely always be battling against the common garden pests. A typical garden will have a lawn area, patio, small vegetable / fruit plot, outbuildings and we can see varied pests that attack these areas – We have many ways in which to deal with them from grandad’s fail proof remedies to modern day products available online. Let us look at natural / homemade ways in dealing with the pests we encounter which come at us via either weeds, diseases or insects.
Here are a few common garden pests and natural / homemade remedies for each:
- Ants: The boiling water trick was always the most popular I seem to remember, though least kindest! Other options includes diverting ants attention away by placing sugar in another area, white vinegar sprayed around entrance points, coffee grounds, citrus and ground black pepper / cayenne / cinnamon.
- Slugs: Including snails, these are quite the common pest and especially to those with allotments! Avoiding slug pellets and any other chemical sprays, it is known that coffee grounds sprinkled around the plants you wish to protect, flat beer in a small container will lure them in, garlic spray deters them as will wood ash around the base of your plants.
- Wasps/Bees: We ideally need to protect bees today and certainly back away from harming them though they can sometimes take undesired residence. Citrus and cloves is a well known remedy along with spraying peppermint oil, garlic and/or basil leaves. Smoke is another trick used to deter bees and wasps.
- Weeds: Of course the best way to deal with weeds is to dig them out and try your best to keep on top of them! Outside of this we can use distilled white vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or cleaning vinegar. Also boiling water can be used directly on the weeds as can naked flames (blow torch).
- Moss: A water, salt, and vinegar mixture with water sprayed on is a popular homemade solution to moss build up.
- Cats / Foxes: We love the photos of these so called pests, though they can also cause us particular problems from fouling to digging up ground. Lemon, orange, lime are disliked by cats either juice or peel. Cayenne pepper, strong odour plants and ammonia are also said to work.
- Aphids (Greenfly, Blackfly): Ladybirds are great for dealing with aphids so plants which attract them should be plentiful in your garden ie mints / fennel / dill. Sprayed liquid soap and water, vinegar and neem oil also work well.
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