Insect friendly ways to protect your crop
- Will
- 0
- Posted on
It can be very disheartening to plant vegetable seeds, water them and feed them only for the crop to be ruined by insects and other bugs before you have chance to harvest them. The problem facing gardeners is that although they want to protect the plants they do not want to harm the insects that are a vital part of the ecological system. Many bees are killed when they are feeding from the nectar of flowers because of the chemical sprays that are used which means that there are less bees to carry out the essential pollination of plants so what alternatives are there open to the gardener who wants to protect the plants but also protect the insects?
An age-old remedy is soapy water. Washing up liquid can be mixed with water and sprayed onto plants in order to deter aphids and mites from eating plant buds. Another solution is to put a few garlic cloves around the plants as the bugs do not like the smell.
Some people use beer traps to catch slugs, but this is not a very animal friendly idea. A better plan is to put crushed eggshells around the edges of the vegetable bed as the slugs do not like to slither across them.