This list is the top 10 garden pests and the most organic way to deal with them.

#1-Deer

These four legged, four lettered word wreak havoc on just about every thing in your garden, except maybe your artificial plants, and even then, the theory is they will eat anything if they are hungry enough. An organic product called Milorganite is a miracle for combating these pests. Milorganite is a fertilizer made in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from treated sewage sludge. It is categorized as a natural fertilizer because 85 percent of its ingredients are organic. There is a lot of controversy over whether this stuff really works. I for one say, yes!

#2-Rabbits

Another of the furry, cute, four legged pests. This one is a little tougher than the deer, though not impossible. The most effective thing you can do for these is fencing. It needs to be at least 2 feet tall to prevent rabbits from jumping over. To keep them from burrowing underneath of it, you will need to bury at least 3 to 6 inches of the fencing, deeper than that would even be better. Make sure bend the buried portion away from the plants, towards the outside of the garden.

#3-Aphids

These soft bodied insects, as well as Mealy-bugs and Whitefly, are fairly easy to control. Scouting your yard and garden on a regular basis, especially when new growth is emerging, is the key. The very first sign of any of these pests and it is time for the insecticidal soap. Make sure you spray the insect itself; the soap has little to any residual effects. Basically, it dries the pest up, thus eliminating any future breeding.

#4-Grasshoppers

Are very difficult to control when they become adults, you will want to scout your yard looking for young ones. The soap can be useful in the early stages, but is usually ineffective, as they get larger. A very easy, and I thought was a joke when I first heard about it, is dust your plants with ordinary flour.
This simple product actually gums up and blocks the grasshopper’s mouth, kind of like peanut butter to a dog, which then prevents the grasshopper from eating. Make sure you are only using ordinary all-purpose flour. Avoid things such as self-rising flour, which usually contain salts, because those are harmful to the plants in the garden.

#5-Snails and Slugs

Feed on a variety of plants and on decaying plant matter. They will chew irregular holes with smooth edges in leaves and flowers, as well as fruit and young plant bark. You will need to rely on a combination of methods to keep these pests at bay. The first step is to eliminate as many places as you can where they can hide during the day. Things such as wooden boards, large rocks, debris, large leafy branches that grow close to the ground, and even dense ground covers such as ivy are all good hiding places. Handpicking is next, the more you get rid of now, there will be less in the future.

There are several types of barriers on the market that will keep snails and slugs out of planting beds. The easiest to deal with are those made with copper flashing and screen. It is believed that copper barriers are effec­tive because the copper reacts with the slime that snails and slugs secrete, caus­ing a disruption in their nervous system similar to an electric shock. You have probably heard of filling a shallow bowl with beer and wait overnight. Yes, the slugs love it and you can dispose of the whole mess by adding it to your compost. The downside to this is, you will need to keep other animals out of the beer, and you will need to refill it every night.

#6-Moles

Con­trary to a commonly held belief, moles are not part of the rodent family; they are actually a small insect eating mammal. They frequently create shallow tun­nels just below the surface where they capture worms, insects, grubs, and other inver­tebrates. Their biggest claim to shame is the damage that occurs through their burrow­ing activity, which can dislodge plants and dry out their roots. In the case of lawns, the resulting mounds, ridges, and tunnels are unsightly, disfiguring and can be dangerous if an ankle gets twisted in one of them.

Trapping is the most universally appli­cable and dependable method of mole control, though; many think this is cruel and inhumane. Mole traps are fairly expensive but are available at hardware stores, nurseries, or directly from a manu­facturer online. There are many different home remedies found online, bubble gum, broken glass, rose bush stems, bleach, and filling the tunnels with water, just to name a few. None of these have proven successful in stopping mole damage or in driving moles from an area. There are some commercially available mole repellents, usually some kind of castor oil solutions. Research on the effectiveness of these repellents has shown some efficacy.

#7-Birds

While many see birds as a useful animal to have in the yard, they do eat insects, caterpillars and grubs, they can also be a nuisance pest. Several bird species can cause substan­tial damage by feeding on ripening fruit, vegetables, and nuts. The amount of damage, the type of dam­age, and any effective control methods vary among different species of birds, so it is important that you try to identify which species is caus­ing the damage. The most effective way to reduce bird damage to gardens and isolated fruit and nut trees is netting.

If you can set up a frame of some kind, it would prevent the bird from getting the produce from the outer edges through the net. Using netting does have its disadvantages, such as the high initial costs, it is very time consuming to put up, and is in­convenient to work around when you want to pick. Frightening devices, such as pie plates, scare crows, fake snakes and such are extremely temporary, even if you move them around continuously, the birds eventually figure out your game and ignore them. There are chemical repellents that rely on objection­able tastes and odors. These repellents have been shown to effec­tively reduce damage by birds in some studies while in others it does nothing. So, they might provide some relief for small gardens and backyard trees even though their overall efficacy is uncertain.

#8-Red Imported Fire Ant

While this particular pest is not a problem nationwide, those of us in the lower half of the country know the pain all too well. The fire ant’s sting is a se­rious concern to people and their pets. Venom is injected into the skin, which causes a painful, burning sensation (hence the name fire ant). Red imported fire ants are very aggressive and can quickly climb onto the object or person causing the distur­bance of their nest and begin stinging. A single red imported fire ant can bite and sting its victim repeatedly. In addi­tion to their stings, fire ants feed on almost any plant or animal material, including other in­sects, ground-nesting animals such as doves or rabbits, young trees, seedlings, as well as developing fruits. They can also causes problems by building their nests around trees, plants, water pipes, and in the walls of buildings.

On the market, you can find fire ant baits, which are the recommended control, simply because they are inexpensive, highly effective, and safe for the environment. Using these baits allows the foraging ants to carry the poison back to the nest and distributes it to the rest of the colony. Spraying any ants outside the nest will only kill them, and spraying the nest itself could cause the colony to disperse and set up shop in numerous other locations. Just make sure you follow the directions on the package as they are the law!

#9- Japanese Beetles

You would think that these things are the next monster movie from Japan! They swarm in, skeletonize a bunch of plants, then they are gone. The folks in the western part of the country may not know of this pest, but the eastern 2/3 certainly does. They do not discriminate on what types of plants they feed on. In fact, they are classified as a pest to hundreds of different species. There is a good chance that if it grows, the Japanese beetle will feed on it. Unfortunately, the most effective way of getting rid of Japanese beetles is to hand pick them. This is very time consuming, but it certainly helps.

If you are a tad squeamish, and don’t want to touch them, then Neem oil is your next best bet. The chemicals in Neem, an organic product, are ingested and passed on into the beetle’s eggs, the larvae then die before they become adults. If you want to have some fun getting rid of pests, plant some geraniums. Japanese beetles are attracted to them like moths to a flame. They eat the blossoms, promptly get dizzy, fall down, and then you can dispose of them easily into the trash.

#10- Earwigs

I saved this one for last because it too, kind of like birds, can be a good pest or a bad pest. Earwigs are nocturnal, feeding mostly at night. They are scavengers, eating primarily dead insects and decaying vegetation, such as composting leaves and other plant items found under wet leaves or mulch. On the flip side, earwigs will attack plants, especially seedlings. Those tender shoots are great food for young earwigs. The damage can be seen on some crops and other garden plants, and that damage can injure the plant to the point of making it unproductive.

Normally any advice given for eliminating earwigs from the garden is to reduce or eliminate the moist, dark conditions from your garden in which they live in. If you have a healthy garden, chances are, you have wet, dark places. It might be under a flowerpot or even just the mulch that is in your beds. Adding a barrier to the edges of your garden is a possibility, because, earwigs cannot travel very far, especially in or over dry conditions. If you can place an area of sand or some other medium that would stay dry, try that. Insecticidal soap has been shown to be a decent control, it does not kill them, but if you spray it every 3-4 days, they tend to stay away.

Hopefully, you have very few of these pests, but like I said at the beginning, every garden will have its pests, so try some of these organic methods and see if you can eliminate the majority of them.

Happy Growing!

Darren