Unwelcome guests making trouble in your bee-friendly garden? Pesky pests making a move on your precious plants? Yeah, we get you. Keeping your garden healthy without accidentally harming bees can be a challenge. Check out these helpful tips for maintaining a healthy home garden and controlling common pests without harming bees and other beneficial insects.
Bee Aware and Beware
It’s Bee Awareness Month here in New Zealand and the Great Kiwi Bee Count is in progress. Fittingly, this month’s mini-series is all about the bees. This week, we’re sharing tips for maintaining a healthy garden without accidently harming bees and other beneficial insects.
This topic is particularly close to my green gardening heart. Our warm wet climate is great for growing. It’s also perfect for growing weeds, fostering fungal issues, and sustaining diseases. Insects of all varieties thrive, including the pests. So hard! I don’t like spraying anything, if possible. Even with lots of planning and care, I sometimes struggle to keep things healthy.
Planting Pest and Disease Resistant Varieties
As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When choosing new plants for your garden, try to find ones that are well-suited to your local conditions for healthy growing. Opt for varieties that are resistant or at least resilient to common issues in your local area.
Experiment with Companion Planting
Companion planting can help to support and protect your garden. Some companion plants are natural pest deterrents. Others can be sacrificial plants intended to lure bad bugs away from more precious specimens. General purpose companions can help to attract beneficial insects, including beneficial predators to assist with natural pest control.
Practice Crop Rotation and/or Interplanting
Some pests and diseases have very specific targets. Crop rotation can help to prevent re-infection and starve out infestations, or encourage the pests to move on to better dining options elsewhere. Similarly, interplanting (mixed plantings instead of large areas of the same crops) can help to limit infestations or infections, isolating so you can try to control issues before they spread. These are generally used with edible gardens, but you can adapt the same approaches for use in your annual landscaping plantings and containers/pots where it might be beneficial.
Support Healthy Growing Conditions
Healthy plants are less-vulnerable to incoming pests and diseases. Good soil and feeding supports strong healthy growth. Early watering gives plants time dry during the day can help to reduce susceptibility to fungal issues. Ground level watering to avoid wetting foliage on susceptible plants is also helpful, where possible.
I’m current experimenting with beneficial fungi soil treatments to help with our wet-weather disease prone soil risks. We’ll see how that goes, but so far things seem to be going well.
General housekeeping and maintenance can help, too. A tidy garden has fewer incubators for problems, like overripe, rotting, or damaged fruits and veggies. Keep tools in good condition to reduce the risk of accidentally damaging plants, and clean your tools between tasks/areas to reduce the risk of spreading any lurking infections or infestations. Don’t forget about yourself, including clothing and gloves, if you’ve been handing diseased plant materials.
Use Non-Chemical Controls
Depending on your insect issues, non-chemical options, such as hand-picking, covers, collars, or traps, may help to deter or control pests. I was once squeamish about squashing insects by hand, but now I’m pretty ruthless. Well. Ruthless if I have gloves on, haha! Bad bugs beware.
Welcome Beneficial Insects to the Garden
Predators like ladybugs, praying mantids, lacewings, etc. prey on pests. Plant attractive plants and flowers to lure them to the garden (herbs or companion plantings are great options). If you are treating or spraying your plants, take care not to eradicate them along with the pests.
Spiders (and some birds, lizards, and other creatures) are garden helpers too, although they are much less discriminate diners and will eat both good and bad insects.
Reduce or Eliminate Insecticide Use
Many insecticides are generic killers, affecting pests and beneficial insects, including bees. Avoid neonicotinoids in particular (linked to colony collapse). If you do spray, consider using a non-systemic, such as pyrethrum, oils, soaps, etc. so that there are fewer lingering risks for the bees and other beneficials Apply to directions at early morning or dusk, when the bees are less active in the garden. Try to avoid treating on or around actively flowering parts, if you can.
We occasionally use non-systemic sprays, neem granules, and seasonal preventatives, like copper. But I commonly use what might seem like rather unusual alternatives to ready-made sprays. Baking soda, milk powder, dish soap, and cider vinegar are some of my personal garden potion go-tos. Check out the DIY kitchen remedies in the infographic below for more ideas.
As noted in gardening for bees, birds, and butterflies, also consider your sources for new plants to reduce the risk of systemic pesticides or other treatments. Some plants are pre-treated at the nurseries or garden centres and may still carry chemical residue or systemic pesticides.
Take Care with Other Garden Chemicals
While pesticides post the most obvious chemical risk, ongoing research indicates that other chemical exposure, such as residual fungicide in consumed pollen, can render bees more vulnerable to parasites and disease. The debate continues on herbicides as well, such as the possible linkage between glyphosate and the microbiome of bees (and other animals).
Most fungicides, herbicides, fertilisers, spray fixers, and other garden chemicals don’t specifically state on labels whether they are safe for use around bees. This makes it difficult to select and apply with care. Err on the side of caution if you’re trying to treat for pests and diseases without accidently harming bees and other garden friends.
Where possible, limit chemical use on flowering plants and avoid spraying around active bees. Before application, make sure that your spraying equipment isn’t cross-contaminated with trace residues of insecticide from previous use.
Home Remedies for Garden Pests
The infographic above on safe/safer home remedies for common garden problems is an excerpt of a more comprehensive graphic and post at Fix.com about discouraging and managing pest problems through non-toxic methods. We’ve shared it here by invitation.
