the author of this post, at
jason@lifehacker.com.
Deer, slugs, and other garden destroying pests might be a part of our
natural world, but that doesn't mean you have to tolerate them being a
natural part of your garden. These tips will keep your plants
pest-free without harsh chemicals.
Better living through chemistry has given us off-the-shelf and
factory-manufactured solutions for any problem you can imagine. Many
people, however, want to forgo using harsh chemicals in their yards
and gardens to avoid unnecessary chemical exposure. This guide
highlights a variety of ways you can keep your landscaping lush and
your gardens unmolested by pests without having to spread toxic paste
on anything or use a sprayer that requires an OSHA-approved canister
mask to use safely. We'll start with the easiest solutions that you
can apply now—even if you're a renter—and move onto the more
time-consuming solutions that require more advanced planning. For the
sake of readability we'll be referring to the space you're working on
as a "garden" for the rest of the article, but all of these methods
work equally as well on landscaping in general. Photo by cygnus921.
Passive Additions to Your Garden's Defenses
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
There are three primary groups that want to wreck shop in your garden:
mammals (like deer and rabbits), insects (like tomato worms), and
gastropods (like garden snails and slugs). You can find heavy
artillery for dealing with all three groups on the shelves of your
local home and garden store, but before you bust out the poisons and
the neurotoxins, let's take a look at cheap and non-toxic ways to
deter pests. Photo by dubydub2009.
Even if you're not particularly worried about exposing yourself to
harsh yard chemicals and you have no pets or small children, you've
still got at least one great reason for trying natural deterrents
first: Poisoning the lower end of the food chain like the slugs and
the insects in your yard will keep them away, but it will also deter
natural predators like other insects and birds from visiting your
yard. Basically you'll end up ensuring a cycle wherein you have to
keep applying chemicals to deal with the problem because you've driven
way the element of nature that was actually helping you.
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
Bring on the Coffee: Coffee grounds are a great addition to your
garden. They add nitrogen to the soil, they increase the acidity for
acid loving plants, and, best of all, a wide range of creatures can't
stand coffee grounds. Slugs hate coffee, cats hate coffee; it's even
sometimes an effective olfactory-based repellent for picky deer.
What's that you say? You hate coffee and have no coffee grounds to
work with? Stop by your local Starbucks and ask. They have a policy of
giving away their mountains of spent grounds for patrons to use for
composting and other projects. Photo by Steve Snodgrass.
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh
ChemicalsBait, Trap, and Deter the Slugs: Slugs are, in my humble
opinion, the most annoying of garden pests. They're the veritable
ninjas of plant destruction. Unless you're looking for them—and
carefully—it's rare to see slugs at all, yet every night they descend
upon your garden and chew the crap out of everything. You can deal
with slugs a variety of ways depending on your adversity to killing
them or merely redirecting them to your neighbor's yard.
Coffee grounds, as mentioned above, will deter slugs to a degree. Even
more effective, and radically longer lasting, is copper. Slugs and
snails hate copper. You can use copper in a variety of forms to keep
them away. To keep slugs from crawling up into your potted plants you
can put decorative copper tape around the body of the container. You
can shield plants on the ground by buying rolls of thin copper
sheeting and making rings around the plants you want to protect—when
you're done it'll look like all your plants are castles in the center
of little copper fortresses. Alternatively, you can buy pot scrubbies
made of copper mesh—snip the tie in the center of the scrubbie and
then uncoil the copper mesh into a long tube to wrap around your
plants. If you're building copper mesh barriers for lots of plants it
will likely end up being more economical to just buy a commercial roll
of copper gardening mesh.
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
If your attempts to deter slugs are a failure, you'll have to start
trapping them. Slugs are, as one would imagine, as dumb as they look.
You can make an effective slug trap with little more than an orange
rind or a shallow container and some grape juice or beer. Save the
half-rinds from citrus fruits like grape fruit and oranges and place
them about your garden. Slugs will flock to the rind. Come morning you
can throw the rind in the trash or put it on top of your compost pile
to dry them out in the sun and mix them into your compost. You can
also put saucers of grape juice or beer around the garden. The slugs
will dive in and drown. Photo by Sustainable Echo.
Repel Insects with Organic Sprays: There are an abundance of organic
recipes online for insect-repelling plant sprays. The majority of them
have common ingredients like garlic cloves, hot pepper, and sometimes
the essential oil extract of either or both. Mixtures of the two work
great for repelling everything from bugs to bunnies. This step-by-step
guide will help you make a potent garlic/pepper mix for your plants.
Deterring the Big Pests
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
If slugs are the most annoying little pests, adorable yet destructive
creates like rabbits and deer are the most annoying big pests. A few
deer can reduce a thriving garden patch to waste or a hearty stand of
hostas to nubs in a matter of days. Unlike the simple orange-rind
traps you use for slugs, you have to be a little trickier with larger
pests. Photo by wwarby.
If you can afford it and it's feasible to do so, putting up a fence is
the only fool-proof way to keep animals out of your garden. Barring
building a rabbit-proof fence, the most effective deterrent for large
pests is to scare the hell out of them. You can spray plants with
nasty tasting substances like the garlic/pepper spray above, but
that's not as effective or far reaching as introducing the scent of
predators.
Apply Bloodmeal Liberally: Bloodmeal is a by product of meat packing
plants. It's dried and flaked blood and animals strongly dislike the
smell of it. Prey animals like rabbits and deer are spooked by the
smell of blood, even old dried blood. Bloodmeal is also extremely high
in nitrogen and a great additive for your garden. Sprinkle it around
your plants and in your garden beds. Take care, however, not to
sprinkle the powder directly on the plants. The high nitrogen content
can burn the leaves.
Introduce Strong Scents: If you have a strong aversion to spreading
bloodmeal all over your yard, you can also introduce other strong
scents. Deer, particularly, are not fond of really strong smells like
bars of scented soap, cheap perfume, and other strong smells. A
neighbor of mine has kept her beautiful hosta beds unmolested by deer
for years now using Irish Spring soap on stakes throughout the garden.
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
Bring in the Predators: You won't literally invite predators—your
neighbors wouldn't approve of your use of coyotes as garden patrol—but
you do want their scent. For about $30 you can purchase fox and coyote
urine. Fox urine is great for repelling small animals like rabbits,
squirrels, and skunks. Coyote urine is great for bigger pests like
deer, raccoons, and opossums. You use it by putting a few drops every
couple feet around the perimeter of your garden and plants. A $30
bottle will last you all season even with a fairly large yard as those
few drops usually linger for a week or two barring a heavy rain storm.
If you're curious, no, human urine doesn't work very well. Urban and
suburban deer have adapted to the smell of humans and don't fear us as
much as they do the smell of other animal predators. Photo by
mikebaird.
Scare 'em Off With Water: Scarecrow sprinklers look like regular lawn
sprinklers, except they have a battery-powered motion sensor. Anything
that gets in the path of the sensor gets a sudden and intense blast of
water. I've never used one personally, but everyone I know that has
one swears by them. They run $50-$75, but they're great for everything
from deer to squirrels to solicitors.
Plant Pest Resistant/Repellent Plants
How to Keep Your Yard and Garden Pest-Free Without Harsh Chemicals
This is by far the most long-term and expensive solution to pest
problems. Some plants are more resistant to attack by pests than
others whether due to bad taste, tough fibers, thorns, or other
natural deterents. We can't provide a blueprint for your yard, but we
can provide some suggestions and point you in the right direction.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to using deterrent
plants. The first school is focused on planting the deterrent plants
as the main course in your landscaping and gardening
adventures—selecting plants right from the start that keep the deer
away and the bugs off. The second school is focused on companion
planting. Instead of giving up on the plants you love but aren't
particularly resistant to pests, you instead plant your garden in
pairings where naturally repellent plants are located near more
vulnerable plants. A common pairing in gardens is tomato plants with
oregano and basil. Not only are oregano and basil great for tons of
tomato-based recipes when it comes time to harvest, but both plants
are strongly-scented and great at repelling pests. Photo by The
Marmot.
Your best bet is to check with your local nurseries, nature centers,
and university extension offices to see what plants grow best in your
area and afford natural pest protection. Searching Google for local
gardening guides and gardening groups can also be very fruitful. To
get started check out some of these guides: Companion Plantings: The
Natural Way to Garden, pest-deterrent herb pairings, pest-resistant
ornamental plants.
Whether you're doing it for yourself, for the safety of your kids, or
to keep your goofy golden retriever from eating toxic slug-killer,
it's possible to radically reduce the number of pests in your garden
without resorting to hosing your yard down with a soup of harsh
chemicals and toxins. Have a favorite tip or trick we didn't highlight
here? Let's hear about it in the comments. Since gardening tips are
often region/climate specific, help out your fellow Lifehacker readers
by noting where your tip has been effective.
--
Scott's Contracting
scottscontracting@gmail.comhttp://www.stlouisrenewableenergy.com
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