Home gardening is one of the most popular hobbies that yields great results even for beginners. But you might be surprised to hear that billions of pounds of pesticides are used all over the world, only by home gardeners. And they are mostly used to control various harmful insects on vegetables and fruits.
Although this approach to controlling garden pests is very effective, it can deal severe damage to your health, the soil, and the water stream in the long run.
One of the most commonly used pesticides includes parathion nerve agents. These are so harmful that they were used during world war 2 Sarin gas. So, you can easily realize that these chemicals can deal serious nerve damage to other animals as well.
But fortunately, there is a natural and harmless alternative to these chemicals that will offer the same benefits to your plants. So, without any further ado, let us dive right in find them out.
Getting rid of garden pests without chemicals
Many methods allow you to get rid of pests. But today, we are going to talk about only the harmless ones so you can keep gardening without any worry.
Sticky trap
Sticky traps are basically a glue-based trap which allows you to control and catch an insect or other pests. If your garden has an area where insects are crawling 24/7, the best way to monitor it is by placing a sticky trap.
The first benefit a sticky trap has is its monitoring. Let say your garden plants are getting damaged, but you can not seem to figure out where is the main source of insect is. If that is the case, then you can install multiple traps in multiple positions around the garden.
As a result, you can pinpoint the source of an insect problem and effectively get rid of them.
Different color’s sticky trap has different functions
Even though the trap might look like a basic tool to control pests, it is important to know that different colored traps have different functionality. Each of them is designed for a specific purpose and pests. It is not only the color but the wavelength of the color that attracts certain pests to it.
As different insects have different visions, researchers have developed various traps specifically for certain pest control.
Yellow traps
Yellow traps are the most commonly used insect traps. These traps art designed for leaf miners, aphids, whitefly. This is a general attractant for a massive range of insects. So, if you are a new gardener looking to control pests, then this might be the one for you.
Leaf miners are one of the most harmful insects if you are growing veggies or greens in your garden. They are designed to help organic farming and break the reproduction cycle of insects. Any kind of flying insect or fruit fly problem can be dealt with by yellow traps.
You can find various yellow traps here. The traps are designed to offer you functionality while also adding beauty to your garden.
Blue traps
Thrips are a scary problem to any gardener, because that damage the leaves, small flowers and destroy the garden. These kinds of damages delay the growth of the plants. A big population of thrips can also damage woody plants. And this is exactly where blue traps come into play.
If you are having a problem with the popular western flower thrips that you should get your hands on these blue sticky traps.
The blue traps have gone through various testing over the years. And in the result, we can see that they effectively decrease the number of trips by almost 80%.
Yellow patterned traps
The yellow patterned traps are significantly effective in places with warmed climates. These patterns offer additional attraction for the insects. As a result, the gardener can catch more insects.
Green sticky trap
Green sticky traps are mostly used inside greenhouses and any kind of ornamental plants inside your home. As ornamental plants are more about aesthetics, many people opt for a green sticky trap for the camouflage effect.
Even though research has suggested that yellow traps are much more effective in catching insects, the green traps are a nice addition, if you do not want your traps to stick out in vision.
Black sticky trap
Another popular sticky trap variant that helps you catch thrips is the black Sticky trap. They are designed to detect pests at the early stage of their life cycle and eliminate them from the start.
This sticky trap is much more effective when used to fight against the common moth species called Tuta absoluta. And the great thing about this trap is, it does not attract ordinary useful insects of the environment. As result, the trap stays activated for a long time and helps you fight harmful pests.
Some other DIY tips to get rid of pests
Create separation
You need to make sure that there is a good amount of separation between each plant and your compost area. As compost heaps act as a focal point for pests, make sure to keep them away from your garden.
Variation of plants
Another great way to keep pests in control is by planting various plat types into your garden. Many plant-specific pests can easily propagate and spread if they find that specific type of plant around them.
By mixing your garden beds with other plants, this can easily be controlled.
Trap for slugs
Slug and snails are very harmful when it comes to gardens of any kind. But fortunately, there are two ways you can keep them away from your plants.
You can keep broken eggs shells around your plants. As slugs have a very soft body, these shells act like blades to them. You can also put a shallow dish full of beer around your plants. As they can not resist beer, they will eventually dive into the dish and drown.
So there you have it- All the tested information of various color sticky traps and some bonus DIY tips for controlling pests. Stay tuned for more updates.