While tending to my own garden, I have found that one of
the most frustrating things that can happen to a gardener is to walk outside to
check on your plants. It’s just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is
thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine
only hours before. The explanations for some of these plant-destroying holes
are garden pests. Some of the main garden pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars,
birds, snails, and the occasional gopher.
Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely,
after all your hard work in the garden you have to do something.
Insects are one of the worst things to have in your
garden; they can live under the soil, in old weeds or piles of leaves, or in a
number of other places. In order to help keep insects away, always try and
eliminate places in your garden and near your garden that these insects and
other plant diseases could be living. Remove old leaves, weeds, or any other decaying
matter that insects and diseases could be living in from your yard. Also,
regularly turn over your garden soil and break apart any clumps of dirt so that
you can eliminate the living spaces any insects that might be hiding
underground.
Another way to rid your garden of the pests is to use
dormant spray, which is used to keep destructive insects and diseases under
control. It is best that you use dormant spray when your plants are dormant,
usually around February or early March. I have used dormant spray many times on
my garden and it has worked wonders on keeping insects out. But as I learned
from experience, dormant spray is only effective if you follow the correct instructions.
When I first decided to use some on my garden, I just dumped it everywhere in
hopes of killing everything harmful. Unfortunately I ended up killing my entire
garden along with my neighbors. Some insects can be beneficial to your garden
though, so be sure to find out which insects help your garden.
Another pest problem I've had besides insects has been
birds. Whenever I see birds in my garden I run outside a chase them away, but
as soon as I step inside they come right back. The solution that I've come up
with to keep the birds away from my garden is to put a bird feeder in my yard. Instead
of costing me time and money by eating my garden, the birds eat at the bird
feeder. In the long run it’ll save you
money. Not only can a bird feeder help keep birds away from your garden, but
they can also be a new part of your yard decoration. Although not completely
eliminating my bird problem, my bird feeder has made the problem smaller.
Getting a dog has also helped.
If you start seeing mounds of dirt around your yard, and
your plants keep unexplainably dieing, you can assume that you have a gopher
problem. Thankfully, this is one of the
few garden pasts that I haven't had.
However my friend has struggled with a tremendous gopher
infestation, so I decided to research it. Gophers are rodents that are five to
fourteen inches long. Their fur can be black, light brown, or white, and they
have small tails. One method of getting rid of these root-eating pests is to
set traps. The key to successfully capturing a gopher
using a trap is to successfully locate the gopher's tunnels and set the trap
correctly.
Another way to get rid of them is to use smoke bombs,
which you place into tunnel and the smoke spreads throughout it and hopefully
reaches the gopher.
If you suspect that your gardens are being pillaged by
any of the pests I mentioned, I encourage you to try your hardest to eliminate
the problem as soon as possible. The longer you let the species stay, the more established
it will become.
