Pests in your garden will destroy your plants and your edible investment. If you’re willing to make your own remedies, your plants will have a chance to thrive. Here’s how to naturally combat some major offenders with supplies you have around your home.
Ants
They crawl all over your plants and transmit diseases from sick to healthy plants. It seems like they just keep on coming, but here’s how to deter them from staying in your garden or coming into your home.
- Ants hate cucumber peels. They dislike the bitterness of the peel so place them where they have made their trails to deter them from crawling on your plants.
- Make a concoction of borax and sugar. A master gardener once told me to use a 50-50 concentration but I use more borax than sugar and it gets the job done. The goal is to have the ants bring borax back to their nests. The mixture should be placed where you see the ants or on ant trails. Borax will kill the ants.
- Vinegar can be used to destroy ant trails by confusing the pests and forcing them to stay outside. Ants like to follow a trail and when there’s something in their way like vinegar or cayenne pepper they will not walk through it. These methods shouldn’t be costly if you already use vinegar and borax to save money in the laundry room.
Slugs
Slugs are fond of eating plants. If you notice holes in your plants’ leaves, slugs and grasshoppers most likely feasted on them. To get rid of slugs:
- Fill small bowls with stale beer and place them where the slugs congregate. Slugs apparently like stale beer, so they climb in to drink and drown. I don’t drink, so I haven’t felt compelled to buy my slugs a beer, but many gardening friends have had success using this method.
- I like spreading crushed eggshells where slugs and snails are prone to travel. The eggshells, which can also be used in compost, are very nutritious for your soil, so it’s a win-win situation. Slugs will not travel over the rough surface and if they do, it’s easy to spot them and dispose of them.
Aphids
Those green little bugs weaken and distort plants’ leaves by sucking out their juices. They love roses and vegetables in the cabbage family like broccoli and Brussels sprouts.
- Ladybugs are your best friends as they will prey on aphids and white flies. I hate discovering aphid-infested plants, but purchasing ladybugs is not the most economical way of controlling them. Instead of spending money to buy ladybugs, attract the red fliers by planting plants they like. Parsley, spearmint, sweet fennel, and dill are among the plants and flowers that ladybugs can’t get enough of.
Nestling mint, marigolds, garlic, and basil in your garden will also help ward off unwanted bugs. If you know of other natural methods of keeping the bad bugs away from your garden, be sure to share them with us.
Welcome to Bargain Babe! I’m Mara, and I’m so glad you’re here. I am an obsessive bargain hunter and penny pincher, and I am determined to live a full life without EVER paying full price.
Thanks for many good suggestions that limit bugs without using pesticides and that use stuff we actually may have at home.
Thanks, Yazmin. Although I’m aware of some methods of deterring pests, as usual I’ve learned some new methods from you. Keep up the helpful suggestions!
what kind of natural method can i use on this:
the other day i found a walnut (whole shell and all) size wasp hive dangling from my plumeria branch. i dont want to spray it with chemicals, that will kill my plant .. but i also dont want those things flying around, my mother was just recently stung by one .. HELP!
My first thought is to water-blast the nest out of the tree. My late husband used to do that when wasps built nests in trees, but used a chemical spray for under the eaves of the house. If this isn’t a great idea, I’m sure someone more knowledgeable than I am will come up with a better solution.
Good luck!!!
Go after wasps at night. They’re active during daylight and warm hours, so hitting the nest out of the tree at night (after midnight or before dawn) works well because they’re sluggish and sleepy. Stomp on the nest with very strong and very flat shoes, you dont want any eggs stuck in your shoe ridges.
I deter wasp nests from being built under the eaves of my house by spraying the area with ammonia or even window cleaner after a nest is knocked down.
I”ve seen someone grab and squash a nest in one motion – of course he was wearing thick gardening gloves at the time.
Haha- basil as a bug deterrent. I have planted 3 basil plants this year and all 3 were destroyed by bugs within a week after planting. My bugs love basil. We also have garlic. Doesn’t seem to help a bit.
@scaredekat I agree with iggy. Go after them in the dark. I wouldn’t stomp on them because you might miss one and it may come after you.
I’ve read that covering them with a plastic bag and immediately securing it is best because you won’t disturb them. Then you can drown them in water.
Make sure to wear thick gardening gloves and protective clothing.
@myrna What kind of bugs do you have? It may be that you haven’t found the right natural repellent. Grasshoppers love basil. They can chow down on an entire plant and just leave the stalks behind.
I think I do have grasshoppers. I’ve seen them on my roses, but not on the basil. They are eaten all the way down to the stalks. Thanks. What kills grasshoppers besides chemicals?
I’m looking for a natural repellent for rabbits. Someone told me about paprika . Does that sound right to anyone?
@Wendy I built a two-foot mesh fence around my two garden boxes. I reinforced the fence with metal and bamboo posts every 16 inches. It’s working great!
We have a large garden, with lots of basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, mint, catnip, rosemary, thyme, oregano, peppers and beans. All have done well except for the beans which were destroyed by the Mexican bean beetle. I have other bugs which like to eat the beetle, but not enough of them. I use the egg shells but that’s really all. We also use a fish based fertilizer that seem to help with bugs too. Spiders are great for gardens, but I’ve noticed that they like rather crowded areas, and given that my garden looks more like a jungle, I get lots of spiders. I think though that because we also plant lots of flowers throughout the garden that we’ve had successful plants. Sunflowers are great because the birds love them once the seeds come in and the birds also eat the bugs.
As for a natural remedy, here’s a blog writer who works with farmers in Africa. She posted a recipe for a red pepper and garlic spray that seems to be very successful.
http://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/a-great-organic-product-for-the-contract-farming-project-red-pepper-and-garlic-spray/.
@Allison Thanks for the tip and link. I’ve noticed a lot of spiders in my garden, too, including a totally white spider. Now I know they are a good sign!
Ants use aphis like cows–they milk them for the juice they produce, so if you want to get rid of the aphis, get rid of the ants.
For a large plant, there’s a product called Tree Tanglefoot which is a product that has natural rubber in it and is incredibly sticky. It either keeps pests from climbing up the trunk/stem of a plant, or catching the ones that try to crawl over.
Diatomaceous earth is another good product–it’s also used for swimming pools so you might find it in that section of a store–it’s very fine (hence its use for filtering) and its tiny, sharp edges (too small for us to see) both clog and cut the chiton of insects bodies.
A friend used it under and in an outdoor floor mat to take care of fleas that had established themselves there–worked like a charm, and no bad chemicals.
I have tried chicken wire around my garden, that did not work keeping the rabbits and squirrels out. What kind of mesh did you use? I am sick of how much money I have spent to see my garden munched away by my furry friends!
My hobby that I am crazy about is gardening. It is an integral part of me and I devote all my free time to it. Sometimes my friends ask for help with their gardens. And I am happy to help. The most frequent question what plant is this.I will be happy to help everyone, so please contact.