Learn organic pest control and how to control pests in the garden without using pesticides.
This post contains affiliate links: I am grateful to be of service and bring you content free of charge. In order to do this, please note that when you click links and purchase items; in some (but not all) cases I will receive a referral commission. Your support in purchasing through these links enables me to keep blogging to help you start homesteading and it doesn’t cost you a penny extra!
See Disclosure, Terms and Conditions for more information. Thank you for supporting Misfit Gardening.
Join over 50,000 gardeners and homesteaders and listen to the popular Homesteading & Gardening In The Suburbs Podcast or read on to learn more!
Natural Pest Control
Pests happen in the garden I’m afraid. It’s part of the natural balance of the world that is your garden. As stewards of the land, we are here to help bring balance to the garden. I use a more integrated pest management style of gardening where I let the natural predators do the work. But sometimes, I really want the cabbages to not be half-chewed by snails or squash bugs to not invade my winter squashes and those dang Mormon crickets to not have eaten my first ripe tomato!
So I get it when you say that you want to control pests but for a sustainable, organic garden we need to look from the viewpoint of kill all the pests to “what are these telling me about my garden?”.
What’s the Story?
Pests typically attack weaker or stressed plants. They are often an indicator that something is going wrong. The soil is often the main reason behind weaker plants. Plants that have healthy soil and adequate fertility around their roots tend to have better immune systems and are able to resist pests and diseases.
Back to the Soil
Fixing the soil by using organic gardening methods will help your garden each season and applying compost throughout the growing season can really help to maintain the fertility levels in your soil. Remember to add 2-3 inches of compost in fall or early spring to your garden to help it grow. If you have terrible luck with gardening so far, maybe dig in and listen to the intensive gardening training series. It’s not too late to start preparing your garden beds!
Pesticides are Bad News
The use of pesticides, even organic ones can do more harm than good in your garden. Even organic pesticides you make or buy are OMRI listed, commercial organic pesticides can hurt the beneficial insects like pollinators in your garden as well as the bad bugs you are trying to control.
Pests that survive the pesticides are going to be stronger and can do even more damage in the garden! This is why in an intensive organic garden, pesticides, even natural ones are the last resort.
Change Your Mindset
Walking the grocery store’s produce section, it’s hard to see that pests exist. We do a lot of removing and picking to ensure that there are no nibbles on the produce for sale. Consumers don’t want to see that hole in the middle of their spinach leaf from a bug!
In our garden though, we can cultivate healthy soil, healthy plants, and bring balance to the bad bugs if we can forgive the nibbles and allow a higher tolerance for insect damage. I’ve walked around so many gardens and insect damage is inevitable but as a consumer, the world of growing food is quite far removed from reality.
Successional Sowing As Organic Pest Control
As you are moving to an organic garden, it will take time for the beneficial insects to find your little organic oasis. As such, you will need to accept more damage to your plants than you would like. One tip I have to overcome this is to succession plant so you can look forward to a harvest if your first sowing doesn’t go well.
How to Succession Sow
This is a technique I use in my garden, especially if I have a scant number of seeds for a rare variety that I traded in a seed swap. I’ll sow a variety of the same plant, let’s say beans because I love beans. So let’s say I have lots of the bean variety Borlotti because I have grown and saved it for a few years from a seed swap but only 5 Soldier Bean seeds. I would plant the Borlotti seeds first.
The pests might come and munch away at those plants and destroy them. I would then sow my Soldier Bean seeds that I traded for a couple of weeks later after the initial pest pressure has passed. With any luck, they will be able to grow without being decimated by the pests that destroyed the first harvest.
What Can You Succession Sow?
Lettuce, radishes, carrots, beets. Succession sowing is great to extend harvests as well as avoid pests. This is also a good strategy for those of you troubled by squash bugs. Plant in early spring and again in late summer so you can still get a good harvest, even with the insect damage.
Learn To Tolerate Insect Damage
I miss not having my chickens because they were great at eating all the overly damaged produce coming from the garden, as well as some of the bugs causing the damage! They didn’t mind one-bit leafy greens with flea beetle damage or the tomatoes that were obliterated by the crickets…even better for them if the cricket came with the tomato!
We need to be more accepting of the imperfections that come with the produce that we grow in our own garden. Know that it isn’t going to be perfect and uniform like it is at the grocery store!
Moving to holistic pest management like integrated pest management techniques takes time and you need to persevere that the success of your garden is inevitable! The methods you will find that work best in your garden may be different from another gardener and their garden. Don’t be discouraged if you have a failure and you see all of these successes on Instagram or on Facebook.
Adjust Timing
One of the things we can control in a garden is when seeds are started. You might find it helpful to start plants earlier by seed starting indoors under grow lights then transplanting out under frost protection in early spring to get a longer harvest before the pest numbers (aka pest pressure) increase and becomes a problem.
You can do the same for the later end of the season and have a great fall garden by seed starting inside, and transplanting bigger plants.
Choose Wisely
The variety of plants we choose to grow can make a big difference in our garden. I’m a big fan of the garden journal to record the observations in the garden. You might find that certain varieties are more susceptible to pests than others. Recording these and experimenting in your garden is one of the keys to growing a successful garden. By honing in on varieties that grow best in your garden means you can grow plants that will thrive.
Companion Planting
Planting your vegetables in close proximity of flowers, herbs, and other vegetables can help to confuse pests with the art of camouflage. Masking their favorite snack food with other plants around them. The different leaf shapes, flowers, and scents all serve to camouflage your plants better than a marine on maneuvers. Experiment with different combinations to find what is successful in your garden. Right now I have chickpeas, popcorn, and blackberries growing very happily together which was part accident, part intentional!
Be Like Elsa
When gardening and not using pesticides, you have got to learn to let it go. It is often a better strategy to remove infested leaves by chopping them off if you spot the problem early. If you have pill bugs all over a summer squash plant that is now looking mottled yellow, it is better to cut the plant at the base, level with the soil, and remove it from the garden. Then go back and add compost and mulch to cover the bare soil or a cover crop.
Practice Good Hygiene
I tend to collect diseased plant material in a bucket that goes only to the garbage and stuff from the garden that is destined for the chickens or the compost in a Tubtrug. Having the separate containers helps to stop mix-up and diseased materials ending up in the composter where they can spread in the garden the next year. Diseased plants are a magnet for pests!
What’s your pest control tip? Let me know over in the Facebook group
Liked this post? Share the love and pin it for later!
Always ensure to operate safely. All projects are purely “at your own risk” and are for information purposes only. As with any project, unfamiliarity with the tools, animals, plants, and processes can be dangerous. Posts, podcasts, and videos should be read and interpreted as theoretical advice only and are not a substitute for advice from a fully licensed professional.
As remuneration for running this blog, this post contains affiliate links. Misfit Gardening is a participant in Affiliate or Associate’s programs. An affiliate advertising program is designed to provide a means for this website/blog to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to websites offering products described in the blog post. It does not cost you the Reader anything extra. See Disclosures, Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy for more information about use of this website.
Share this:
