Tag Archives: integrated pest management

Garden Advice

Organic Slug Control

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Many of our customers occasionally struggle with pests. Unfortunately, they’re a part of gardening! One common issue we see, especially in spring and early summer, is slug damage. These slimy little creatures are active at night and during cool temperatures, snacking on your plants, especially young, tender foliage. They can take out entire seedlings or reduce your harvest from tasty crops like tomatoes and strawberries. Learn how to identify and combat a slug problem with organic methods. 

Signs of Slugs

  • Shiny slime trails across leaves and the ground.
  • Irregularly shaped holes in leaves, flowers, and fruit.
  • Look for slugs at night or on rainy days.
  • Look for slugs under lower leaves, boards, and other cool, moist shelters.

Deter Slugs

Slugs thrive under certain conditions. To prevent them from becoming an issue, avoid making your garden an attractive habitat for them. 

Here are some ways to deter them:

  • Prune lower branches and foliage to encourage air circulation and sunlight.
  • Stake plants like tomatoes to encourage air circulation and keep fruit off the ground. 
  • Divide or thin plants to encourage air circulation and sunlight.
  • Remove natural mulch, like old leaves, at least temporarily.
  • Add compost to beds, improve soil, and improve drainage to help combat wet conditions over time.
  • Remove places where slugs could hide, like containers, flats, stones, boards, etc.
  • Use water-wise gardening techniques like drip irrigation or soaker hoses to minimize excess moisture. 
European Starling
European Starlings are not native to the U.S. but are common in the southeast and are incredible slug predators.

Attract Predators

In the long term, attracting slug predators can also be an effective way to manage slugs. We think they look a little slimy, but many creatures, such as slugs, beetles, toads, turtles, snakes, ducks, and certain songbirds, find them to be a tasty treat. Providing habitats for these animals within your garden can encourage them to stay and eliminate slug populations.

Handpick or Trap Slugs

One of the simplest ways to get rid of slugs is to handpick them. Put on some garden gloves and head out at night with a flashlight for a bit of slug hunting. Then, crush the slugs or toss them into a bucket of soapy water.

While we previously mentioned getting rid of slug homes like boards, you could add them to make the perfect trap. Each morning, flip your board and kill any slugs you find. 

Another classic method for dealing with slugs is the good old-fashioned beer trap. Take small containers or dishes and bury them a bit in the garden so the top is level with the ground. Then, fill them with beer or a water and yeast mixture. The slugs will be attracted to the beer or yeast mixture, fall in, and drown. If you have a serious problem, you may need to put out a good number of traps and change them daily.

Organic Slug Baits & Deterennts

Coating plants with a heavy dusting of diatomaceous earth can help keep slugs at bay. However, it must be reapplied frequently and isn’t always a great long-term solution.

Copper foil or bands are another effective slug deterrent. While they can easily be affixed to a single raised bed, they may not be an efficient choice for large gardens.

You can also purchase organic baits like Sluggo, which is OMRI-certified. If you want to use slug bait, this is a good option because it’s safe for pets and non-toxic. It’s made from iron phosphate.

Many other slug baits are toxic to other animals, including pets and young children. Always select and use garden products carefully.

We always aim to work with nature to create beautiful, bountiful gardens. Unfortunately, pests will always be an occasional issue in any garden, whether organic or conventional. Thankfully, slugs are a relatively easy pest to deal with, and you can use these simple strategies to deter and eliminate them.

Garden Advice

Organic Pest Control: Japanese Beetles

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A species of scarab beetle, these iridescent insects can be a nightmare for gardeners. Japanese beetles or Popillia japonica skeletonize the leaves of many plant species leaving just the veins. As the females eat throughout the early summer they lay eggs in the ground, eventually producing 40-60. Around midsummer, these eggs hatch into larvae which feed on grass roots until fall when they burrow 4-8 inches into the ground and go dormant for winter. In late spring they become pupae and eventually beetles which emerge from the soil and begin the cycle anew.

Solutions

If you struggled with Japanese beetles in your garden this summer, fall is the perfect time of year to take care of them. Here are a few ways you can control Japanese beetles in your garden.

Beneficial Nematodes

Beneficial nematodes or Steinernema feltiae are worm-like parasites that move through the soil and feed on Japanese beetle and other larvae. When beetles are in their larvae stage spreading nematodes on your lawn or around your fruit trees and garden can be effective.

Milky Spore 

Milky spore or Bacillus popilliae is a bacteria that attacks Japanese beetles in their larval stage. It can be spread on lawns and gardens. Apply before the ground freezes.

Chickens

If you have chickens giving them free rein of the garden or around fruit trees during fall and winter can help. Chickens actively forage for insects in the soil. While their incessant scratching can be a problem around your plants in the middle of summer it can be extremely helpful in the fall. They’ll dig up and eat the larvae. During the summer they’ll also enjoy eating the beetles but you’ll want to limit their time in the garden and fence off small plants that can be easily damaged.

If free-ranging your chickens even for a bit isn’t an option for you, consider putting up moveable fencing. A plastic deer netting will work in a pinch or you can invest in something electric netting which is easy to move, allowing you to rotate your chickens’ pasture.

Welcome-to-the-Garden Pollinator Collection

Wildflowers

Some studies (like this one from 2015), have indicated that wildflower plantings can increase insect biodiversity and the number of beneficial insects in gardens and reduce pest issues.

Floating Row Cover

While not necessarily the easiest solution, adult Japanese beetles can also be kept at bay with floating row cover.

Neem Oil

Some folks have also had success using neem oil to protect plants from adult beetles. It’s an organic pesticide and fungicide that’s used for a variety of garden problems and is available in many garden supply stores. It’s generally sprayed directly onto the plant. Multiple applications may be necessary throughout the season.

Crop Rotation & Cover Cropping

As always we recommend keeping your soil and therefore plants healthy by employing crop rotation and cover crops. Healthy plants are much less susceptible to pest problems. Fall is the perfect time of year for a soil test as well.

Sources

Garden Advice

Organic Integrated Pest Management

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As lovely and romantic as organic gardening can be it can also be really tough. A huge struggle for many organic gardeners is dealing with pests in an efficient and economical way without the use of pesticides or rodenticides. Developing an organic integrated pest management system or IPM can help.

Monitor & Identify

The first step is to monitor your garden and identify any pest issues. Record any problems in a garden journal and be as specific as possible. Research the type of pests you’re seeing and their life cycles. Are they cabbage worms or cabbage loopers attacking your broccoli plants? Also record dates and conditions when they attack your garden. Do aphids destroy your fall crop of lettuce or do the only impact your spring sowings? The more you learn about these pests the easier it is to prevent them. You should also consider at this time if the pests are actually a problem. Having to pick off a few tomato hornworms may not be worth putting major preventative measures in place if they’re not actually affecting the productivity in your garden and are otherwise easily managed.

Prevention

This is the most important part of an IPM. Once you’ve gathered information you can put preventative measures in place. Knowing a pest’s habitat and life cycle can be key. Examples of of preventative measures include planting a crop late or early to avoid a major pest season (ex. planting quick maturing cabbage early when it’s too cold for cabbage moths), attracting certain bird species to keep pest populations in check, encouraging or purchasing native predatory insect species (ex. ladybugs can be purchased online and are excellent at reducing aphid populations), growing pest resistant varieties, or using row cover over your most vulnerable crops. Sometimes you’ll need to employ a combination of these strategies. Often a well planned preventative strategy can keep your garden productive without a lot of additional work.

Control

In severe situations where pest prevention has been ineffective control measures are used as a last resort. These controls may be very effective against pests however they’re typically costly in other ways. Some, like handpicking can be very time consuming while others may actually be pricey for the small gardener like neem oil. Even though they aren’t as problematic as chemical pesticides they also may have unintentional environmental impacts despite the fact that they’re organic. Organic pesticides like neem oil, diatomaceous earth, or milky spore powder may be implemented with the intention of only harming a single pest species but unfortunately there’s no way to protect the good species. These organic pesticides can still kill beneficial insects like butterflies, bees, parasitic wasps, predatory beetles, and more.

Using integrated pest management can help you successfully maintain an organic garden. While no strategy is perfect, researching and recording your specific pest problems and then implementing preventative strategies can be effective.

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