Prevention, insect-eating bugs can help keep garden pests away the natural way

Published on April 08, 2014

Prevention, insect-eating bugs can help keep garden pests away the natural way

Gardeners worried about the safety of synthetic pest-control products sometimes turn to botanically derived compounds instead. But many of those also contain toxic ingredients, such as nicotine, rotenone and pyrethrins.

"Botanically derived pesticides are not always safe and some are more hazardous than synthetics," said Linda Chalker-Scott, an extension horticulturist at Washington State University's Puyallup Research Center. "Any improperly used pesticide will contaminate nearby terrestrial and aquatic systems."

And don't use home remedies, she said, which could be "illegal and possibly fatal to many good things in your garden."

Instead, consider the benign-neglect school of pest-control a mix of prevention (such as maintaining healthy soil) and natural controls (such as insect-eating insects).

"I don't add fertilizers. I don't use pesticides. I use a wood chip mulch, which provides habitat for beneficial insects like predacious ground beetles that may eat slugs and slug eggs," Chalker-Scott said in an email.

Ninety-nine per cent of the insects in our yards are benign or even beneficial, writes Jessica Walliser in her new "Attracting Beneficial Bugs to Your Garden: A Natural Approach to Pest Control" (Timber Press). She recommends introducing insects that eat other insects.

"A single ladybug probably the most illustrious beneficial predatory insect can consume up to 5,000 aphids during its lifetime," Walliser says, adding that there are thousands of other insect species capable of doing the same thing.

To keep these predatory insects around, however, you have to offer a diverse and pesticide-free garden with plenty of plant-based foods.

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Prevention, insect-eating bugs can help keep garden pests away the natural way