Natural Pest Control Methods for the Garden - Keep Bugs From Ruining Your Harvest Without Pesticides

In this video I'm gonna show how I control pests in the garden - naturally. Insects can be a nuisance in the garden, but they play an important role in the ecosystem.They provide food for birds, they help pollinate our gardens, and they help break down organic matter into nutritious soil that our plants can use. So when you use a pesticide, no matter how organic it claims to be you are still affecting the ecosystem.
My first rule for pest free plants is to keep them happy and healthy. Compost is an excellent soil amendment that works overtime helping your plants thrive.

Stressed plants attract pests. Over fertilization is one source of such stress. Watering issues and mineral imbalances in the soil cause problems in the plants ability to carbon dioxide, water, and nitrogen. The result is a stressed plant with excess soluble nitrogen and excess sugar.

Excess nitrogen is a magnet for aphids. They feed off of it. Then have lots and lots of babies, and quickly create an infestation sucking the life out of your plants. The excess sugar stored in the roots is like free ice cream at an all you can eat buffet.

Plants have a natural immune system that makes them taste terrible to pests. Just like organic, whole foods help boost our own immune system, compost provides plants with nutrients they need. The difference between compost and synthetic fertilizer is like the difference between eating a variety of nutritious foods and a diet consisting of only multivitamins.

Compost rich in decomposed organic matter provides micronutrients needed to boost plants’ natural defenses. Healthy plants are rarely attacked by pests because their immune system makes them indigestible to insects.

Soil that contains compost is full of beneficial fungi. These fungi keep plants healthy by out competing disease causing organisms and by forming symbiotic relationships with plants. The fungus through its massive mycelium network helps plants uptake nutrients and water and in exchange the plants provide the mycelium with sugars.

Trap crops are another resource you can grow to keep pests from destroying your garden. A trap crop is a sacrificial crop that you grow with the intention of getting infested with bugs. You then remove the trap crop along with the pests. Think of it as a decoy, you got the broccoli you want to eat over here and the decoy plant of radishes over there. Plant the decoy trap crop about two weeks before you plant your desired crops, so when the pests arrive, they will go to whatever they find first. Also make sure to space the trap crops far enough apart, about 4 feet, because they will cross contaminate if planted too closely.

The type of trap crop depends on the type of pest you want to attract as well as the crop you want to protect.

Herbs such as dill, parsley, cilantro, and basil make delicious companion plants. They repel pests and attract beneficial insects! Dill is also a host plant for monarch butterflies and a decoy plant for tomato hornworms. Grow dill! It attracts a ton of beneficial insects!

Beneficial insects are insects that eat other bugs and they don't harm your plants.

Lacewings, dragonflies, spiders, and ladybugs are gardener’s friends.
Spiders - stop ants from taking over your garden to farm aphids. Just like humans farm cattle, ants farm aphids for the sweet sticky honey dew they secrete. If you stop ants, you’ll prevent aphids.

Ladybugs eat aphids. You can buy them online and release them in your garden, or you can get them for free by growing herbs that naturally attract them. Dill, parsley, calendula, and cilantro make great host plants for ladybugs.

For larger insects and caterpillars enlist the help of birds! Insects provide protein in a bird’s diet.
- So how do you attract birds to your garden?
- Grow berries they can eat
- Plant bushes where they can hide
- Provide them with a source of clean water

If you live in the southeast, you’re probably familiar with anoles, or these little lizards. They are insectivores and an important part of our ecosystem here in Florida. Besides being famous for our beaches and theme parks, we are also famous for our mosquitoes. And these little lizards are doing the lord's work keeping insect populations under control.

This is my 3rd year gardening without pesticides. It has been a challenge, but also a joy seeing the symbiotic ecosystem come together. Luckily in Florida we have a year round growing season, so we don’t have to wait until spring to try new techniques. I’d like to encourage you to create your own ecosystem and let me know what kind of birds end up visiting your garden!

Thanks for watching, glad you made it to the end! If you want to learn more about permaculture gardening make sure to hit that subscribe button! And if you have any questions or suggestions for a video, drop them in the comments below. Until next time! Bye bye!

[tomasprener]

I learned a lot from this video. In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. The more I know the more I am at awe.

[janellelonnquistakers]

Yessss!! I'm trying to start up a garden for veterans to overcome government takeover of farming. This means soooo much to me. You are truly the best teacher ever!!!!

[archur]

I really enjoy your videos.
I want to share a recipe for a natural pesticide that you can even drink. I found this from the University of Ecuador.
Shave the stones from a couple of avocados, dry on a tray for a day or two. Boil in 6 cups water until the water becomes reddish brown. Cool, settle or strain, then spray on the plants.

[eleanoraddy]

I've got calendula everywhere but I didn't know they were sticky for pests, the list of reasons to grow them just gets longer all the time!

[draftplus]

A trap crop I use in NH is Okra. I moved to NH from GA where okra is a staple. I tried growing it in NH, and found that the Japanese beetles devoured okra and left my other vegetable alone. Love your videos.

[Mommyslittlegarden]

This video was so thoughtfully made. So helpful.

[Cris.Vlades]

I just bought a 5 acres home in Clermont and your videos are helping us a lot! You are so knowledgeable and explain everything so well that you deserve a lot more subscribers!

[douglashartman]

Great video! Finding a symbiotic way to do things has always been in the back of my mind. Now that I'm older and ready to garden again this is invaluable to me. TY so much!

[brookeshepherd]

Just found your channel and im loving it and loving your realness!! Lol!
Another great trick here in north GA is keeping cardinals and yellow finches around year round with black oil sunflower seed and planting a few sunflowers around your yard in the growing season in addition to keeping seeds around year round, this has significantly helped with keeping down with tomato horn worms and other pest!
Cardinals love those horn worms!
Keep up the awesome content!!!

[AmandainGeorgia]

Thanks for all the useful info. And that blooper reel was gold. 😂

[JameLeipold]

t the Japanese beetles devoured okra and left my other vegetable alone. Love your videos.A trap crop I use in NH is Okra. I moved to NH from GA where okra is a staple. I tried growing it in NH, and found thaF

[allanturpin]

Nice to find another Florida gardener in my zone and on the same wavelength on YT.
Great quality vids and editing.

[cucamonga]

Hello I just found your channel yesterday and subscribed immediately. I live in Miami and try to have a permaculture food forest in my backyard for several years now. The insects always get to my food first. It’s a never ending struggle but I’ll continue trying. Thanks for educating folks about permaculture. 🌴💚☮️

[nickbodenschatz]

I'm doing this in Florida as well. It's nice to see someone else doing the same. Most of the neighbors don't and I'm guessing that's why it seemed to take ...a growing season or two I believe, so a year here...for the ladybugs to show up in noticable numbers to really get ahold of the aphids. Purple hyacinth bean turned out to be great at attracting aphids and is perennial here in NE FL, but ours passed during a prolonged (due to poor health) raised bed rebuild. The seeds come up great and we have our own from that plant, so I'm looking for a better trellis situation for them where I can still reach them to jet off the aphids when they become overzealous and do damage.

[biodivers]

Watch nature and learn. I think you’re doing a good job 👌

[debliedel]

Great job! Wonderful presentation! This is how I garden and have had great success! Everything has a niche and works together ❤️

[brianseybert]

I have gone to no external inputs to my garden over the last few years. Finding out LAB is keeping the potato beetles at bay, so far.
Planted a bunch of yarrow to attract ladybird beetles and green lacewings this spring, I always do dill, fennel, cilantro and parsley.
Sounds like you garden the same way I do.
New subscriber, Stay Well!!!

[RenaissancetoRomantic]

Interesting video Christina, thanks very much. I believe in using compost everywhere in my garden. I live in Argentina and in my particular area we have Summer temps reaching well over 120 degrees and do not get too much of an annual rainfall so I am constantly making compost for my veggies and indoor plants, and yes you are correct, this also helps keep the insects at bay for the most part.

[annette-jw]

love your videos - keep them coming! i'm in eastern NC and my gardening neighbors and i are overrun with pill bugs/rollypolys what ever you want to call em. they do NOT just munch decaying materiels (sob sob), they gnoshed my bean seedlings that were 4" tall when transplanted, they decapitate my carrot seedlings and fell pepper seedlings (the ones my dog does not eat first!). they LAUGHED at neem oil drenches (cold pressed, stored in the house). we're holding steady with diatomaceous earth for now, must reapply after the top of the soil dries after a rain, but I'm all ears for additional help. my neighbor uses beer traps, which are helpful, but i don't think there's enough beer in NC to keep these at bay. what eats pill bugs? got lots of birds around, and 4" lizards hanging around the garden. this weekend I will work on a set up to suspend seedlings a few feet off the ground as an extreme measure to escape the pill bugs. any advice will be savored. THANK YOU

[markbloyd]

I really enjoy your videos, and hope this channel grows quickly, so that you can keep producing more videos.