Natural Herbal Pesticides for your Organic Plants! 7 Simple Tips for Organic Growing.

My garden it being attacked! I have to save it quick! What should I do?

After some research I have stumbled on some good tips to deter pests and weed in an Organically grown garden. My biggest problem here on Vancouver Islands West Coast is slugs. Next up is weeds. If any one has any suggestions about what has worked for them, I would love to hear it. Until then, here are some tips I found and am going to try out. I will update later with the results.

1. For nibbling pests one gardener suggests a concoction of crushed garlic and hot peppers such as cayenne, added to water and sprayed on your plants. Steep one gallon of water with 1\2 teaspoon of each and dilute to about 25% before spraying vegetables.

2. For pesky weeds in sidewalks or other places that are hard to dig the roots up, pour a mixture of boiling water and vinegar on them. Beware of hitting neighboring good organic plants though.

3. Use tonnes of mulch. Through your grass clipping around your plants. Or put compost, bark mulch, hay and leaves. This will help keep the weeds down.

4. To deter slugs and add calcuim to organic soil, save you eggshells and surround your plants with them.

5. Stop cutworms with a simple cutworm collar. Cutworms are the pest that cut throught the base of your Organic Plants when they are just new transplants. To make a collar, cut a toliet paper roll in half legnthwise and then cut a slit through the side to allow for the collar to slip around the seedling. Put around the stem of your plant and push down slightly to stop the cutworms.

6. Iron phosphate has proven to be an effective and completely safe way to keep slimy nocturnal creatures like slugs from eating your hard work. Commercial brands in pellet form include Sluggo and Escar-Go. Simply sprinkle the pellets around where slug damage is evident. Pellets need re-applied every two weeks or so.

7. Some one told me to hang bags of human hair in netting around the garden in order to repel deer organically, this seems a little dark to me. Smelly soap does the job too with less of a weird factor. An egg wash with one egg mixed into a spray bottle of water and sprayed on plants will deter deer from eating. Lemon dish soap spray is also a good mix to keep predators off your goods.

Let me know how these tips work for you and your own Organic Garden. If you want to see some organic gardening proffessionally done, be sure to visit the Harbour House Garden Tour in Sooke, BC. They have one of the best edible gardens on the island.

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