Plant Gardens 101

Biological Control of pests requires active human role. Here reduction of pest population is made effective by natural enemies. These natural enemies of insect pests are called biological control agents. They include predators, parasitoids and pathogens.

Predators are such species which consume a large number of preys during their life span that are lady beetles and lace wings. Parasitoids finally kill the host. Their immature stage develops on or within that single host and most have a very narrow host range for example wasps and flies. Pathogens are organisms which cause diseases for example bacteria, fungi, viruses. They also kill the host.

Biological control strategies are basically of three types- Conservation, Classical Biological Control and Augmentation. (more…)

HOW TO RID YOUR GARDEN OF SLUGS ORGANICALLY ARTICLE OF OVER 50 GREAT TIPS HOW TO RID YOURGARDEN OF SLUGS WITH OUT POISON By L P MARSHALL

Does your garden have slugs? If you find large damaged plants with leaf or plant damage and that annoying slime trail? Then you probably have an infestation of slugs. Slugs range from 6cms to 12cms long. They range in colour from gray or black, to bright yellow green and even white. They tend to become more active in spring when the soil is moist and plants are young. They can cause enormous damage and destroy fruit and vegetables. The main position to remember about slugs is that they although very destructive they can be also very useful in a garden there purpose in say a compost heap by breaking down ensigns in the soil so it can help speed up the breakdown of vegetable matter.

The following tips have been suggested and tried by many a frustrated gardener. this useful e-book contains over fifty great tips including.

• Slugs naturally like to hide beneath rocks, boards, garden refuse and compost heaps or sods of damp soil that usually affords them moist and dark conditions.
• one of the easiest ways to catch slugs is to Use traps. Lay boards, inverted flowerpots, and old flattened cardboard boxes around the
• Perimeter of the garden. Place damp sponges or shingles on the ground surrounding your plants.
• Another great tip is to use traps is to attract the slugs then give them something to eat. But beware, you may attract your neighbor’s slugs with this method.
• Slugs are attracted to the taste of fermented yeast. Beer is commonly used. Beer an effective way is to part buries a plastic cup of beer in which they drown or it can dehydrate them, but it doesn’t kill them.

If you splash some water on them they dehydrate-and if you prefer they could crawl away. You have to get them out of the beer trap and dispose of them safely without poison. Leonard Marshall the author wrote this guide because he owns three cats and a dog and wanted to use poison free methods without harming his pets or wildlife. Lets face it he did not want to harm the slugs either, just move then on or discourage them in the first place.

To find out more on how to order a copy or to just read a free report log onto www.killingslugs.net

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All gardeners, from the seasoned professional to the weekend novice, hate to see the onset of weeds in the garden. Weeds threaten the very life of your prized flora and fauna. Here are some of the more common weeds found all across the nation and what you can do to stop them.

When it comes to common weeds, winning the war requires a patient and methodical approach. Pouring synthetic chemicals on your garden or lawn is not only environmentally irresponsible, but often ineffective as well. By sticking to the basics of weed control, you can restore your garden or lawn into a healthy state without breaking the bank on the latest weed-be-gone fad. (more…)

You’ve struggled, you’ve toiled and, at last, you are satisfied with your garden. It just couldn’t be better. But what’s this? Pests! Now you’ve got to prevent the invasion of destructive bugs in your garden. Here’s the best kind of gardening advice you can find for that purpose: Try growing companion plants.

Companion plants are very useful to gardeners or farmers. They have natural substances in them that will repel or attract insects. In specific cases, they can even increase the growth rate of plants, even improve the flavors these plants produce. Not only that but they help to bring a balanced ecosystem to the landscape. Overall then, growing companion plants will result in much healthier and productive plants and better crop production.

There are many kinds of companion plants available. If this is the first you’ve heard of them, you’ll probably be very surprised by what you’ll find. These are some examples of companion plants: (more…)

If we could garden without any interference from the pests which attack plants, then indeed gardening would be a simple matter. But all the time we must watch out for these little foes little in size, but tremendous in the havoc they make.

As human illness may often be prevented by healthful conditions, so pests may be kept away by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste are lodging places for the breeding of insects. I do not think a compost pile will do the harm, but unkempt, uncared-for spots seem to invite trouble.

There are certain helps to keeping pests down. The constant stirring up of the soil by earthworms is an aid in keeping the soil open to air and water. Many of our common birds feed upon insects. The sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds who help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too. And toads are wonders in the number of insects they can consume at one meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us. (more…)

Earworms are also referred sometimes as the fruit worm. They look like caterpillars and can grow over an inch in length. Their color range can be green, brown, yellow or tan and have black or brown stripes on their sides. They lay their eggs in the spring then continue to eat the silk of corn before it gets to the actual ear. However, this pesky insect does not just limit itself to corn. It also goes after beans, peas, peppers, potatoes, squash and tomatoes.
Spray the affected plants with Btn which is bacillus thuringiensis in the spring just before the eggs begin to hatch. Bacillus thuringiensis is a soil dwelling bacterium that is commonly used as a natural pesticide. It occurs naturally in caterpillars as well as moths, butterflies and on the surface of dark plants.

Create an environment in your garden to allow beneficial insects to enter. Such insects include lacewings and trichogramma wasps. A lacewing is a winged insect in the order Neuroptera and a trichogramma wasp is a common wasp insect used to control pests. (more…)

You’ve struggled, you’ve toiled and, at last, you are satisfied with your garden. It just couldn’t be better. But what’s this? Pests! Now you’ve got to prevent the invasion of destructive bugs in your garden. Here’s the best kind of gardening advice you can find for that purpose: Try growing companion plants.

Not all garden pests are harmful for your garden. Some garden pests, in fact, provide excellent pest control to protect your plants from other quite harmful insects. Isn’t nature wonderful? Here are 5 well-known garden pests which you wouldn’t object to having in your garden. Some very useful techniques are also offered on how you can attract these insects that are in your area over to your garden. (more…)

Pest control means management of a species creating problems for human beings directly or indirectly, since it is considered to be harmful to an individual’s health, the economy or the ecology.Pest management is at least as old as agriculture as it was necessary to keep crops free from unwanted animals and insects.

Chemical control dates back 4500 years, with the Sumerians usingSulphur compounds as insecticides. InIndia the Rig Veda, which is about 4000 years old mentions the use of poisonous plants for pest control. But chemical management became widespread with industrialization and mechanization of agriculture in 18th and 19th century, and the introduction of insecticides Pyrethrum and Derris Today chemical pest control is the dominant type of pest control. But its aftereffects have led people to think about alternatives in the form of traditional and biological pest control. (more…)

With the cool coarsen of the tumble spell, most lawn and plot vermin and diseases begin to fade away. Yet, there are a the lawn and backyard mice that prosper off the cool temperatures of the accident period. One good position about decrease lawn and patch vermin is that they will not have the occasion to last while mechanism and summer vermin because the freezing temperatures of chill will destroy them off long before they do a tremendous quantity of break.

Still, while, if these collapse lawn and plot mice have been at it all summer long, they may push around through the reduce and inflict havoc on the enduring lawn and backyard perennials, bulbs and trees.

Fall Armyworms
The most charming part about the reduction term is the different colors of flora that will start to develop in September and October. Unfortunately, Fall Armyworms love to prey on this striking shrubbery during the reduce months, as their name suggests, and can do scratch very rapidly. (more…)

Adult Chinch Bugs usually appear in your lawn in March, but their life cycle in the turf begins long before that as larvae. They have black bodies and legs, white wings with a black triangular spot on each wing. Also known as Blissus leucopterus leucopterus, and B. insularis, Lygaeidae, a Chinch Bug is a beetle that the size of a grain of rice, and the larvae can be as small as the head of a pin. But don’t let their small size fool you, the power of a Chinch Bug infestation to destroy your lawn should not be underestimated, especially if your grass is currently experiencing a drought or consistently dry conditions year round. These pests live deep in the thatch throughout the fall and winter and steadily eat away the root system of your grass and other plants.

But it gets worse. Much worse.

Chinch Bugs don’t just eat your grass, they actually inject poison into the plant as they eat, causing your grass to turn yellow and die in large patches. These patches are usually circular, with the center looking much worse than the outer perimeter. (more…)

While I was enjoying the summer night life a few weeks ago, I was annoyed at the insects that were trying to bite my arms and legs. I commented to my friend that I was worried about getting the West Nile Virus because I had recently heard that there was an increased chance of outbreak this year, as the California Governor was taking increased precautions against the virus. My friend said that his neighbor had contracted the Virus from an infected mosquito. That knowledge really began to worry me. Vying to protect my health (I could definitely not afford to get sick because of school and work), I looked into ways to protect myself from mosquito bites besides wearing long sleeves and pants. (more…)

In 1912 a small box of Iris bulbs was shipped to the United States from Japan. It found its way quietly across the ocean and was delivered to an unsuspecting home gardener somewhere in New Jersey. Unknown to the shipping company, the postal worker, and the gardner, this small box of iris bulbs also contained a tiny beetle which would eventually cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to plants throughout the United States.

By the 1970s, infestations of this beetle were reported in 22 States, mostly east of the Mississippi. These beetle infestations continue to spread southward and westward, leaving massive damage in their wake.

This notorious pest is called the Japanese Beetle. Today, these beetles destroy more lawns than any other pest, costing more than $460 per year. They also destroy trees, shrubs, and many kinds of plants. (more…)

If you’ve ever had to get rid of gophers from your lawn or garden, then you’ll know just how frustrating a process it is. If you are now faced with the problem of gophers, why don’t you find out from someone who has tried all the tricks, which is the one that actually works.

I have lived with the frustration of gophers in my garden and it wasn’t until I found someone that had done all the research for me that I found a solution that worked for me. In a nutshell, you need to educate yourself about these creatures, what their habits and behaviors are, find out what gets rid of them for good and what thousands of other people have used and had success with.

When a gopher is burrowing under your garden, there is more than just superficial damage occurring. While gophers don’t eat the roots of plants, their digging pulls up the roots and exposes to them to external damage. The digging can also cause rocks to be exposed and that can be damaging to any garden machinery you may be using. Also, the piles of dirt that accumulate at the entrance to their holes, are fresh soil for weeds to take root. (more…)

Pests in one kind or the other are found throughout the planet. Whether they are the insects, bacteria, mites, snails, nematodes, viruses, rodents or birds, all come under the head pest if found in unwanted areas or in unnecessarily huge numbers. Pests have the potential to wipe out entire economies and make the people starve if allowed to propagate and act unchecked.

Even the ancient civilizations understood the necessity of pest control. Those days, pesticides available from natural sources were used. With the advent of the industrial age and rapid growth of population, requirement for food and raw materials from natural sources increased manifold necessitating more areas coming under commercial agriculture. Chemical pesticides or synthetic pesticides proved their worth during this period as they not only could remove pests from large areas in no time, the left overs also could act as repellents too for some period of time. That they are available to counter all kinds of pest infestations under the sun makes more and more people gravitate towards them in no time. (more…)

A weed is an unwanted, nuisance plant and the bane of gardeners everywhere. Whether gardeners like it or not, weeds must be attended to lest they take over the garden. They are fast growing, prolific reproducers and generally can colonise places where nothing else will, or can grow. In nature, there are no weeds, just plants, their role is to rapidly colonise any bare earth. They are in fact, the earths protector. Weeds tend to bring trace elements to the surface that are benefical to other plants after the weeds have gone. But, gardeners, farmers, and councils, don’t like them. For gardeners and farmers, this is easily understood, as these opportunistic plants compete with crops and gardens, for space, sunlight, nutrients and water, also harbouring pests and disease. Councils think they are ugly and untidy - such are the delicate sensibilities of humans in general. At the moment, we will be concentrating on the effects of weeds on gardeners.

Although there are many ways to control or keep out weeds - weeds happen. When weeds do occur in your garden or landscape, although it is always best to get them when they are small or young, we are not always able to do so. Some weeds, given the right conditions, are able to proceed from germination through to reproducing themselves within a week! Luckily, this is not the norm. Generally, weeding is best done by hand. If you are able to get them when young, they can be easily taken care of by chipping with a hoe on a warm day, pricking them out with your fingers, or smothering with a layer of mulch. (more…)