Organic gardening pest control

One of the main problems of organic gardening is pest control. Because organic gardeners can no longer use artificial and chemical pesticides, most find it hard to get rid of these pests. The natural process of controlling pests is not only hard to jumpstart, it sometimes does not work the way we want it to work.

But experts in organic gardening believe that it is possible to control pests. All people need to do is to be vigilant of their garden and to anticipate potential problems. According to these experts, the key is to nip the problem in the bud and to control it before it needs to be controlled. That way, you won’t need to exert as much effort.

Another thing that they advise is to not panic and start spraying pesticides. When growing organic vegetables, it is important that you keep everything natural. Once you’ve sprayed chemicals into it, even just one time and just one plant, you have already ruined the whole organic garden.

Also when dealing with garden pests, it is not always the whole garden that is involved. Sometimes, you only need to treat one or two plants and just leave the others be. You can spot the problems by looking into the leaves and the general health of the plants. Look for one who seems smaller, sicklier or thinner than the others. Chances are, a pest is thriving there. This is also one of the ways to easily spot pests and control them before they spread to other plants in the garden.

Below are two of the natural pesticides that you can use for your plants.

Insecticidal soap.
You can create this by combining potassium and sodium salts with fatty acids. When this is put in direct contact to the insect, it causes the insects exoskeleton to collapse. This is one of the safest pesticides there is. It is not toxic. In fact, it can actually be used on vegetables that are about to be harvested.

Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis)
As you can see, these are bacteria and sometimes bacteria help out plants and animals when they are in the right amount. There about 80 types of Bt that are being used as pesticides for organic gardening. They are sprinkled on the plant, which are in turn, consumed by the unsuspecting insect. To them, this is stomach poison but to people, pets, birds and bees, it has no effect.