Fighting Garden Bugs If you have a lovely garden of flowers or / and vegetables, you may be certain that you will not be the sole one appreciating it. However, the vast majority of the others will be unwelcome. Pests are bound to be eying up your produce with evil intentions as far as you are concerned. If you cherish your flowers and vegetables you will have to do something to deal with them. How seriously you take this quest is naturally up to you, but a garden will soon get overrun if you do nothing at all. There are basically two ways of countering garden pests: there are items that you can use, so-called mechanical methods and spray killers such as insecticide and fungicide. These two methods offer an infinite variation of combinations to deal with backyard insects. A useful instance of a mechanical method of protection is the covered frame. A covered frame is a five sided box with no bottom. You stand it over your plants particularly whilst they are young. The top of the box may be perspex, glass or fly screen. The plastic, perspex or glass top is useful for protecting the plant from frost as well as insects, whereas the fly screen will let the elements in but protect the plant from bugs and birds. They might be thought of as winter and summer protection respectively. A cheaper way of protecting young plants from say cut-worm, is to cut the top and bottom off a drinks can and then cut the body into three rings. Place a ring around a plant and push it at least an inch into the ground, leaving an inch or two showing. Leave the cut edges ragged and rough to deter slugs, snails and cut-worms from scrambling over it. If that is a lot of trouble, you could use plastic bottle rings or cardboard treated with oil - perhaps WD40 - which will deter pests too as the above and stop it becoming soggy by rain. . If you would like to spray your fruit, you will require a spray-gun. You could either get one with a compressor or you can pump it up yourself. The latter are much cheaper, do a decent job and supply more exercise. The chemicals used in these sprays is quite corrosive, so get a spray tank that will resist this. Aluminium, stainless steel or brass are the best, but you ought to take advice relying on the chemicals used. Cheaper models will rust away quite quickly. Make certain you may buy extension rods for spraying into trees if you want to. Slugs and snails are not keen on travelling over rough surfaces, so you ought to save all your egg shells, crush them into a coarse grit and lay them in a ring surrounding your plants.
The weather will break them down, but they contain nutrients that are good for the soil anyway. If you have an ants nest exactly where you do not need one, wait until the spring or early summer and lay a piece of slate or tile over the entrance to the nest. Place an upturned flowerpot on top of this and cover the hole in the base of it. After a couple of dry days, the ants will have brought a few hundred eggs up onto the slate. You can eat these - Thais say they are an aphrodisiac - or you can feed them to your fish. After a couple of weeks of this the ants will become discouraged and will move their nest somewhere else. Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on a number of topics, but is currently involved with the Bed Bug Covers for Mattresses. If you would like to know more, visit our website at Bugs Infestation.