Getting Rid of Pesky Pests

Garden pests come in all shapes and sizes, but no matter how slimy or voracious or cute and fuzzy they are, we all know they have to go! Of course, you can find a pesticide or deterrant in chemical form for any type of insect or critter. But it is possible to use more earth and plant friendly methods of killing or scaring away the animals that wish to eat your plants.

Many insects can be repelled from your garden by placing orange rinds or spraying orange or any citrus oil around your garden. Diatomaceous earth, a white powdery substance, will kill many crawling insects with no detriment to your garden. Slugs are drawn to shallow dishes of beer places around the garden, fall in and perish. Many infestations of mites, scale insects and the like can be effectively suffocated by a liberal spritz of a mild soapy water solution.

For larger pests, the goal is usually to scare them off rather than kill them. As well as you fence your vegetable garden, animals will still find a way in. And no one wants a 6 foot tall concrete bunker wall around their pansy patch, complete with steel reinforced underground mesh. Small animals like mice and tunnelling animals like moles may have to be gotten rid of physically. Make sure you do nothing to actively entice them into your yard or home, such as spill birdseed or leave piled newspaper around. Deer and birds may be scared away by mylar balloons, CDs, aluminum pie plates, or other moving shiny things tied to the fence or nearby tree branches. You can use the animals' senses to work against them. Spray your plants with a dilute red-pepper solution and they will leave after one bite. Human hair sprinkled around the garden can also repel animals, as can a dish of ammonia or an old cloth your dog slept on for a week or two unwashed.

I think the most important thing to realize is that there is no way to get rid of all garden pests no matter how hard you try. You must accept some as just a part of your gardening life and nature.

Planting In June

Planting in June is not only for those who are late to starting their garden, but for those who want to add plants for fall color as well. The June Gardening Calendar and June Planting Guide are both prepared and waiting for you now.

In other site-related news Garden-Helper has been selected as the "Cool Site of The Day" for June 30,2006.

Geo-Cashing

I’ve had to write on the subject of Geocaching for a few clients so I knew about the mechanics of the exercise. When I knew my brother-in-law was coming to town for the Memorial Day weekend I mentioned to my eleven year-old daughter that he might be willing to take her Geocaching.

Apparently for all my research I hadn’t actually told my daughter anything about the art of GPS treasure hunting. Six treasure hunts later she owns her own GPS unit (thanks to some birthday cash) and we are able to venture out into one big garden whenever we want.

Now, I know that this is a column about gardening and I suppose you may be wondering what GPS has to do with it, but I think there is a link here somewhere. You see, often we tend to look only at our own gardens and try to revamp what we’ve done to make it better the next time we plant. Take a look around - venture out a bit and ask questions.

Consider the world a gardening treasure hunt. There will always be those who are more knowledgeable about things than you are, so take some time to uncover some gardening treasures by taking some bit of geography (in the form of various gardens) and cashing in on the experience of others.

My daughter has plans for us to go Geocaching every night this week. While I’m pleased that she wants to get up and get moving, there is a garden just out back that may need some Geo-cashing of its own and if I’m persistent I will find the treasure hidden there - sometime in the fall - with a little help from my friends.

As the Leaves Grow…

The precious buds of Spring are giving way to the verdant canopy of Summer. This brings a cool respite for the weary gardener working, bent-backed over their seeds and weeds. As the weather warms and the sun travels toward the apex of the sky, the shade of the unfurling leaves is very welcome.

But shade can bring trouble to the garden. When I first moved into my house, the corner by the rear porch was home to some scraggly pachysandra and weedy moss. The problem? Hardly any sun reached down between the holly tree and the mountain ash. But I refused to yield the garden bed to the bare earth.

The lack of sunlight is not the only problem in most shady spaces. Long-ingrained into gardeners’ heads was the chore of carting away nutrient rich fallen leaves in the Autumn. This leaves the ground under trees severely depleted. The first thing you have to do is mix in a substantial load of good compost.

Choosing plants is not as difficult as it may seem. Most flowering plant options for shade gardens will bloom in the Spring before the full foliage is out on the trees. Naturalizing bulbs such as narcissus and grape hyacinth are excellent here. Foliage plants rule the shade garden the rest of the year. Sweet Woodruff is the ultimate in shade ground cover. Hostas, which come in a multitude of sizes, colors, leaf shapes and flower heights, are one of the most popular perennials anywhere. Rapid-spreading ajuga is also a great ground cover. Astilbe, Lily of the Valley, toad lilies, and many different varieties of ferns are also wonderful additions.
Don’t fear the shade. Don’t use it as a quick cool down between enjoying one garden and the next. Create a summer time oasis with fabulous plants to cool and delight.

Thinning With Age

So there I was looking out over the vast domain known as a garden. The radish plants are mature and as long as I keep them well watered they don’t get to hot to the taste, the cucumber plants are making their presence known and the zucchini is looking like the twin of the cucumber in another part of the garden. Carrots are producing an almost fern-like showing and I begin to pick undesirables from the garden. I want this to be the best garden ever, so weeding comes early and often. If I can catch them while they are small, the weeds aren’t as much of a problem. If I should happen to miss them, they suddenly appear to be California sequoia almost overnight.

There is one additional purging that will make your garden even better - thin the produce.

Usually the instructions for gardening have you planting more seeds than they expect to actually grow. Invariably there will be those seeds that are overachievers and you wind up with multiple plants in a small space. If you don’t thin - they grow into each other and each demand nutrients from the soil. Carrots can wind up looking deformed if they are subject to compaction. Face it, you want to give your garden the greatest chance of success - that’s why you work to pull the weeds. Now? Pull some of the garden plants if they are too close together, the end result will be much more satisfying.

Veggie Days!

Summer is looming and, in most areas, it is time to work in the vegetable garden. The last clean up of last year’s plants has been complete, the soil dug and loosened, each worm praised and carefully replaced in the dirt. Cool weather crops like asparagus, peas and Spring lettuce are already producing happily.

About now, it is time to start seeding the other cool weather crops such as the root vegetables: carrots, turnips, radishes, beets and onions, and also cabbage, shard, and lettuce. Vegetables that you started in seed trays indoors should only be placed in the garden after hardening off.

Hardening off is simply the process of getting those baby seedlings ready for the outside world. The seedlings have been spoiled rotten! They have gotten a steady supply of water and light, warm conditions and your close attention. You can’t just throw them out into the garden! It just seems mean… but more than that, indoor raised seedlings have a thinner cuticle than outdoor plants. The cuticle is a waxy covering that prevents the plant from drying out and gives it strength. Also, the actual plant cells grow longer and less sturdy because of the ideal conditions. Plants grown outside develop shorter, tougher cells that can withstand wind and rain.

In order to harden your seedlings so that they survive outside, all you have to do is reduce watering and start introducing them to the great outdoors. Start with only a few hours in a sheltered spot without direct morning sun. Slowly increase their time outdoors and move them closer to full sun. This should be spread out over one or two weeks.

Starting them young with a process called thigmomorphogenesis can even further help seedlings. That big word just means ‘changing the form through touch.’ If you simulate breezes through use of a gentle fan or waving a piece of cardboard at them a couple of times a day, your plants cells will develop shorter and stronger. When the plants get bigger, you can very gently brush them with a feather duster to stimulate even further thickening of the cell walls. Strong healthy seedlings are necessary for a prolific vegetable garden. Get those cool-weather crops out there and try to be patient when you wait for the day to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and all those warmer weather crops.

A Child's Garden

When my daughter was born I worked hard to assure that when my wife took her outside she could ‘toddle’ without anything poking her feet. So I sprayed for weeds and fertilized - a lush yard was the end result.

I didn’t stop there.

My daughter loved flowers so I made sure there were plenty to look at and I made it policy to have enough flowers that she could pick them at will.

When she was four, her brother joined us. He liked the flowers too, but I decided that his idea of finger food needed a new outlet - so I started plots of strawberries and raspberries. Then I added cherry tomatoes to my regular garden.

Today that little girl is eleven and her brother is seven and they still love to pick flowers for mom and they enjoy being able to play in their bear feet while picking snacks from the garden.

It’s not uncommon to find their faces stained with berry juice as they hand a bouquet of tulips, daffodils, lilacs and blue flax (that’s the current bouquet) to my wife.

They’ve enjoyed the flowers so much that I made each of them a special flower bed just for them. They’ve been able to choose what flowers we would plant and what sort of landscape material we would use (for my daughter it’s aged wood, a bird house that looks like an outhouse and a few moss covered stones, for my son it’s a bumble bee with wings that flap in the wind and a few decorative signs).

I guess my encouragement would be to allow your children to enter into your love for gardening and the outdoors. They do much better if there isn’t a hands-off policy. Give them some ownership in your landscape garden design and watch them flourish.

The War of the Dandelions

Preparing one of my flower beds for the upcoming planting of annuals this past weekend, I was distracted by my son whispering behind me. I turned, and saw him standing still a few feet away, head bowed in an almost spiritual seriousness over something he held in his hand. Curious, I leaned over so I could see and then gasped in horror!

“I wish…” he whispered reverently. “ I wish…” and then he screwed his eyes up tight, lifted his hands in front of him, and blew.

Hundreds of fluffy white seeds flew out, dancing on the breeze. They carried his fervent wish, and my most relentless enemy. He watched them fly away on the afternoon breeze, eyes wide and smiling. I watched them settle like paratroopers between the blades of grass, eyes glaring and a grim determination narrowing my lips.

Dandelions.

In the span of a summer, dandelions can take over a lawn if unchecked. They are not bad plants, actually. You can make dandelion wine from the flowers, add the bitter-tasting leaves to your salads (best picked before the plant flowers). The plant is actually quite nutritious. The leaves and roots are high in Vitamins A, B complex and C, calcium, phosphorus, and iron. In fact, homeopathic medicine prizes dandelion for cutting cholesterol and detoxifying blood while improving liver and kidney function.

But they are unwanted invaders in the lawn. My neighbor is out from April to October with a strong poison solution, shooting his dandelions point blank in their sunny yellow faces. I use a more organic approach and either dig them up or just pop off their flowers and buds, effectively beheading them and stopping their propagation.

My son turns to me, smiling wide and eyes gleaming with joy. “I made a wish, Mommy!” he shouts, but I just nod as I scan the lawn. I know they are out there and I won’t rest until I find them!

Seek and destroy.

Flexing Their Green Muscles

Don’t you just hate those moments when new growth is just coming through the surface - you’re not sure (in some cases) what is expected growth and what is nutrient robbing weeds.

By the time you can tell the difference (or when you finally remember to take a close look) the weeds might be flexing their green muscles by crowding out the plants you want to keep. You’re not certain, but one of them looks a little bit like Marlin Brando and it seems to making an offer you can’t refuse.

Then, just when you’ve committed to the mass eradication of the weed mob, you discover that by pulling the weeds you might just yank an innocent vegetable or flower too.

In farming it’s not out of the question to allow both weed and grain to grow together. Harvest allows the two to be separated easily. When I’ve sought to wrench nasty bits of undefined and unwanted weeds from my flower garden, I invariably pull out a bulb or two. But, if I leave the weeds in place, the flower garden looks awful.

Two things have helped make my flower garden relatively weed free. The first is a weed barrier fabric that can be cut in locations where you physically plant flowers. The second is a covering of mulch that holds moisture in and can choke out some of the additional weed infestation.

No one loves weeds (who was that guy that thought dandelions was a good idea?), but you can do a few things to put a stop to weeds if you take preventative action early enough in the planting season. If you wait, you may need to keep up with an army of small weeds that insist on a season long series of frustrations.

If you should happen to need to pull larger weeds, a fully saturated plot will allow the weeds to be removed more easily and may allow replanting of flowers that were removed by mistake.

A Legacy Garden

You gotta love the feel of clodless dirt sifting through your fingers. Some of us have or will be planting bulbs or perennials in the not too distance future, while some are enjoying the results of last falls plantings in the form of early blooming bulbs.

Whether you are preparing flower beds for a bountiful crop of color or adding compost to your garden soil, this is a time of refreshment for gardening enthusiasts.

My own grandpa had an acre sized garden and he would spend hours cultivating the ground and thinning the crops. Every visit we would leave with grocery bags filled with tomatoes, carrots, peppers, rhubarb, green beans and the occasional watermelon.

For grandpa it was more than just a passing phase – the garden was his life from April-October. For many of us, the legacy of a hands-in-dirt lifestyle has been successfully passed on to a new generation.

Sure, the techniques and skills for soil and crop management may be a little different, but the common sense idea of organic, home grown produce means that a little piece of our family history grows anew every year.

So when you’re planting your favorite flower or vegetable this spring, you may find your mind wandering back to a simpler place and time. Enjoy the sights and smells of your past and then sit back and watch the legacy grow.

Nature's Mulch & Compost

Spring is here, and the ornamental cherry tree outside my window is bursting with pink blossoms. Daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and other spring bulbs are adding color to the yard. Ahh… Every gardener’s favorite time of year! I wish I could just sit back and enjoy it all, but I know that soon, I’ll have to begin my two least favorite tasks: mowing the lawn and pulling weeds.


One thousand square feet of lawn yields about 200 pounds of grass clippings annually, and most people just bag them and toss them to the curb like garbage. Weeds, once sprouted and producing seeds, take over both your garden and your time. The easiest solution, and the one that is the most economical and earth-friendly, is to use your grass clippings as mulch in your flower and vegetable gardens.


If you have a mulching mower – one that double cuts the grass clippings into tiny pieces and shoots them back down into your grass – it is advisable to let it do its job. The grass clippings will break down quickly and add much needed nutrients to your lawn. If you use weed-killers, chemical fertilizers, or pesticides on your lawn, you should not use the grass clippings in your gardens. However, if you pick up your non-treated grass clippings, they make excellent mulch around any type of plants.


Grass clippings should be placed in thin layers around plants and allowed to dry before adding another layer. If you put a thick layer, the grass clippings will clump together and rot, producing bad odors and actually preventing water from getting down to the plant roots. Grass clippings break down quickly and will be feeding your plants all season long while preventing weeds from sprouting. Why pay for expensive bags of mulch when nature provides?