Gardening - Safe Pest Control Tips
Pest control must be done with utmost consideration to safety; safety in terms of the plants, animals and humans. This holds especially true for those with vegetable and organic gardens.
The main purpose of growing vegetables organically will be defeated if they become tainted with pest control chemicals.
Here are a few long-term maintenance tips to make pest control less damaging and more environmentally friendly.
1. Use the physical pest control process.
This may be accomplished through picking grubs off by hand, creating barriers and traps and plugging holes. Snails can be found hiding in damp places under rocks and towrds the base of those plants with straplike foliage.
2. Apply biological pest control.
Encourage predatory insects such as green lacewings and dragonflies to feed on aphids and other pests that attack your plants. You can do this by placing a shallow bowl of water in the garden. Dragonflies especially will hover around water. Bacterial insecticides such as B. thuringiensis could also be used against caterpillars.
3. Only as a last resort should we turn to chemical pest control.
Organic pest control methods can be successful and the ingredients for many of the recipes can be found in the kitchen cupboards. If chemical sprays are really necessary, try and find the least-toxic. These include insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils, dehydrating dusts, etc.
4. Consider the use of safer pest control substitutes.
Recipes for alternative pest control include the following:
Against Green Aphids and Mites - Mix 1 tablespoon of liquid soap and a cup of vegetable oil. Dilute a teaspoon of this solution in a cup of water and spray on aphids and mites.
Against Cockroaches - Dusts of boric acid can be applied to cracks or entry points of these insects. Bay leaves on pantry shelves could also help in warding off these critters.
Make sure that the chemicals you use are made specifically for the insects
you are targeting.
About the Author: Article provided by stmadeveloper
Garden Definitions and Factiods
Aster Flower
Aster is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. The genus once contained nearly 600 species in Eurasia and North America, but after morphologic and molecular research on the genus during the 1990's, it was decided that the the North American species are better treated in a series of other genera. After this split there are roughly 180 species within the genus, all but one being confined to Eurasia.[1] The name Aster comes from the Ancient Greek word astron, meaning "star", arriving through the Latin word astrum with the same meaning, referring to the shape of the flower head. Many species and a variety of hybrids and varieties are popular as garden plants because of their attractive and colourful flowers. Aster species are used as food plants by the larvae of a number of Lepidoptera species - see list of Lepidoptera which feed on Aster. Asters can grow in all hardiness zones.
The genus Aster is now generally restricted to the Old World species, with Aster amellus being the type species of the genus, as well as of the family Asteraceae. The New World species have now been reclassified in the genera Almutaster, Canadanthus, Doellingeria, Eucephalus, Eurybia, Ionactis, Oligoneuron, Oreostemma, Sericocarpus and Symphyotrichum, though all are treated within the tribe Astereae. Regardless of the taxonomic change, all are still widely referred to as "asters" in the horticultural trades. See the List of Aster synonyms for more information.
In the UK there are only two native members of the genus of which one, Goldilocks is very rare, the other being the Sea aster, Aster tripolium
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