Tips for avoiding pests
- Be in your garden.
- Prune your plants
- Know that you have to deal with pests
Horn Worms (green worms)
- Not easy to find – black droppings
- Chemical free treatment – prune the plant (only foliage not covering the fruit)
- Organic Pesticides – BT
- examine plants often.
Spider Mites (spiders with webs)
- Like dusty plants
- Chemical-free -Pruned off the damage. rinse the whole plant off.
- Organic Pesticides – Dr. Earth Final Stop Yard and Garden (all essential oils)
Aphids (many small eggs in clusters)
- Don’t let your plants touch
- Spray the plants with water.
- Do it again.
- Use essential oils – warm water, dawn, essential oils. Make sure you soak the backs of the leaves.
- Peppermint Neem oil ( 1/2 gallon water, 5-1 tsp 100% organic neem oil, 10 drops peppermint oil and a squirt dish soap (soak daily for two weeks)
Cabbage Loopers (eggs) – around lettuce, cucumbers, spinach – leave leaves looking like Swiss cheese.
- Smush the eggs
- Organic pesticides – Bt
Ants ( attract aphids)
- Sprinkle diatomaceous earth
- Borax and jelly (equal parts) paste to attract the ants
- Citrus oil solution
- Insecticidal soap
Grape Leaf Skeletonizer
- Remove the leaf and step on it.
- Check every day.
- Organic pesticides- Bt
Don’t use the pesticides, just knock squish the insects.
