Organic Insect Control

By gardener | Nov 18, 2008

Controlling insect pests in your yard and garden organically will be one of your easier gardening tasks. There is a wide range of non-chemical control methods and products for
combating insect problems. Interest in controlling pests without chemicals is on the upsurge,
for farmers as well as home gardeners. Farmers are using sophisticated new products, and even computer systems, to help them battle insect pests with fewer or no pesticide applications.

In the home organic garden, you don’t need a computer to manage pest problems. However, a systematic approach to dealing with pests will help prevent many problems from becoming serious enough to affect yields or damage plants. You’ll find organic pest management is a
more casual system than the chemical-driven approach that relies on strict spray schedules
for control. It involves blending natural methods and defenses into all your garden activities, beginning before you plant in spring and continuing throughout fall and winter. For example,
it’s possible to minimize damage by coordinating planting times to take advantage of weak
points in the behavior or life cycles of pests.

There are also physical barriers or traps you can use to stop pests from reaching your plants. It’s also possible to have the native natural enemies of pests do much of your pest control work. The key to the system is to encourage your garden’s natural resistance to pests and to work with the natural balance of beneficial and pest insects and organisms. When selecting a control method, start with the least intrusive step. Ask yourself what effect your control method will have on the rest of your garden. For example, watering frequently to keep plants healthy has little harmful effect anywhere in the garden. But spraying pyrethrin to control beetles may also kill many lady beetles or other beneficial insects that are near your potato plants.

Organic insect management is a mixture of 4 types of control:

1. Cultural controls: These gardening practices emphasize keeping plants healthy, selecting well-adapted cultivars, and keeping the garden clean.

2. Biological controls: Encouraging and protecting populations of naturally occurring insect predators and parasites of insect pests is fundamental to organic pest management. They are
your best allies in the garden. You can supplement their effect by releasing insectary-raised
predators and parasites or by using microbial sprays to apply various diseases that infect pest
insects.

3. Physical controls: Insect pests can be physically destroyed in order to stop the damage they
do and avoid the dangers of using chemicals to kill them. These methods range from the
primitive – handpicking and squashing bugs – to the complex – traps that lure insects in and then don’t let them out.

4. Chemical controls: If pests get out of balance in your garden, overwhelming the capacity of
other control methods to stop them, there are certain sprays and dusts that are acceptable for
the home organic gardener to apply. These are derived from plant sources and are not as persistent in the environment as synthetic pesticides. However, they are toxins, and as such, should be used only as a last resort.

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