Clever Ways to Get Rid of Garden Pests
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Once your plants become established outdoors, it won’t be long before critters invade your garden. Whether
it’s beetles feasting on your flowers or deer devouring the tomato plants, here’s how to get rid of pests
without resorting to dangerous poisons…
BUGS
Aphids. These tiny, green-gray bugs can suck the life from vegetables, flowers and tree leaves. They usually
travel in large swarms so, despite their small size, they can devastate a garden.
Aphids are repelled by the scent of citrus rind. Combine one tablespoon of freshly grated citrus rind with one
pint of boiling water, steep overnight, strain the mixture through a coffee filter, then pour it into a spray bottle.
Add three drops of dishwashing liquid, and spray affected plants and those nearby.
If that doesn’t do it, buy an insecticidal soap at a garden store. Test it on one or two plants -- insecticidal
soaps may do as much damage as aphids. If the sprayed plants show signs of leaf browning, curling or
spotting within the next three days, don’t use the soap. Otherwise, spray aphid-affected plants every five to
seven days as long as the problem persists. Be sure to spray the undersides of leaves as well as the tops.
Japanese beetles. These shiny, half-inch-long copper-colored beetles with green and white markings are a
familiar but unwelcome sight to gardeners in the eastern US. Japanese beetles are particularly fond of
rosebushes and grape and raspberry plants, but they’ll eat virtually any plant.
To fight back, put soapy water in a wide bowl and hold it under the branches of beetle-affected plants. Gently
shake the branches. Most of the beetles will drop into the bowl and drown.
A long-term solution is to apply milky spore disease powder -- available at garden stores -- to your lawn near
your garden as directed on the label. In two to five years, the disease will take hold, killing beetle grubs in the
soil. The disease is harmless to humans, pets and beneficial insects.
Slugs and snails. These pests eat holes through broad-leaf plants. To limit damage, place a few empty tuna
or cat food cans in the soil up to their brims. Then pour beer into them. Slugs and snails are attracted to beer
and drown in the cans. Use long-handled tweezers to remove the dead pests, or dump the contents -- beer
and all -- on your compost pile. Then add more beer to the cans. Install beer traps in spring before slugs and
snails have a chance to reproduce.
Also put a few boards on the ground in your garden. Slugs and snails love the moist shade underneath.
Every day or two, pick up the boards and scrape the collected critters into a pail of soapy water. Remove the
boards in autumn so that slugs and snails can’t seek shelter there during cold weather.
Helpful: You will substantially reduce your garden’s slug and snail population if you water your garden in the
morning rather than the afternoon. That way, the soil will be dry by night, when these creatures are active,
robbing them of the moisture they need to survive.
ANIMALS
Deer. Deer are naturally mistrustful of certain scents. You can hang cheesecloth bags of human hair (hair is
available at salons and barber shops) around your garden. Dirty socks or bags of soap also may do the trick.
Organic deer-repellent sprays, such as Deer Away Deer Repellent and Hinder Deer, have odors that are
offensive to deer but not to humans. You can expect to spend $25 and up per gallon at a garden store. Odor-
based solutions such as these will not stop all deer, but they can cut plant loss in your garden by 30% to 50%.
The only way to stop most deer is with an electric fence. Expect to spend several hundred dollars at a home
or garden store for a fence kit large enough to protect a 50-by-50-foot garden. To keep deer from jumping
over your fence, smear peanut butter on aluminum foil tabs and attach them to the fence (always turn off the
power before touching the fence). Deer that lick the peanut butter will receive a small shock and learn that
your garden is best avoided. An electric fence is not an option for households with young children. You also
can switch to the following plants that deer don’t like -- or create a living fence of these plants around your
yard.
Flowers: Begonias, daffodils, foxglove, globe thistle, iris, lavender, marigolds, meadow saffron, peony,
scented geraniums, snapdragons, stars of Persia, sweet alyssum, strawflowers, yarrow, zinnias.
Trees and bushes: American holly, boxwoods, Caucasian daphne, Sawara false cypress, Japanese pieris,
northern red oak, pine, red osier dogwood, rugosa rose, spruce.
Rabbits. Rabbits can ravage gardens, consuming everything from vegetables to seedlings. If rabbits are the
culprits, you’ll find hard, pea-sized dark brown droppings in neat piles.
You can try scaring rabbits away with fake snakes. Cut an old garden hose into serpentlike lengths, and
place the pieces throughout your garden.
If that doesn’t work, another way to protect your garden is to construct a two- to three-foot-high chicken wire
fence around it. The fence must extend at least six inches beneath the ground so rabbits can’t burrow under it.
Voles. These tiny rodents can consume close to their body weight in tubers and bulbs each day as they
tunnel through your garden.
When you plant bulbs, arrange a handful of sharp crushed gravel around them in the holes to keep voles
away. Remove wood chips and mulch from the vicinity of young trees and shrubs in autumn so that voles
have less cover during cold weather, when they eat mainly tree roots.
Gardeners with serious vole problems can plant their crops in wooden frames with quarter-inch or smaller
wire mesh stapled to the bottom (frames are available at garden stores). The mesh allows roots to grow out
but prevents voles from tunneling in. Or grow daffodils, one of the few garden bulbs that voles (and squirrels)
won’t eat.
