As plants are growing, check them two or three times a week. Monitor them for insects like aphids, spider mites and tomato hornworms, or diseases like powdery mildew. Invest in an insect identification book for gardeners. Though it's impossible to eliminate all pests, but if they're found at an early stage, they are much easier to control.
Here are a few tips to keep pests under control in ways that are safe for you and the environment.
- Sanitation. This means hand-pulling weeds as you find them, picking hornworms off tomato plants or removing diseased branches/leaves.
- Water. Spray plants with water to control aphids (on roses, for example) or spider mites. Put a wet, rolled-up newspaper among dahlias at night and in the morning shake out all the earwigs into soapy water.
- Biorational pesticides, like soaps (for aphids), horticultural oils, or sulfur dusts.
- Buy yellow sticky traps to control whiteflies around tomatoes or other pests such as aphids, leafhoppers, leaf miners and wasps. The bugs are attracted to the colour and get stuck.
- Birds and ladybugs are the gardener's best friends for insect control. Birds can be encouraged into the garden. Ladybugs consume 40 to 50 aphids a day and can be bought.
- Botanical sprays are derived from plants, for example, Rotenone and Pyrethrum.
- BT. Also known as bacillus thuringiensis, it utilises different strains of bacteria and fungi to target specific pests and are relatively nontoxic to beneficial insects, animals and humans.
- Synthetic pesticides, or fungicides. These products should only be used when all natural ways to rid pests fail.
A plant under stress will be more vulnerable to pests, so give plants the right location, good soil conditions and good air circulation. For example, powdery mildew affects roses planted where air circulates poorly.
Finally don't rely on just one method of pest control, as the best results come from using a range of techniques.
— The writer is a freelancer based in India
