As any gardener can attest, pests are an unwelcome, nasty shock that may flip your flourishing inexperienced backyard right into a conflict zone. And most of the chemical pesticides obtainable actually are harmful for people, pets, wildlife, and planet Earth. Nonetheless, there are quite a few strategies for shielding your backyard from pests with out the usage of harmful chemical compounds.
Maybe shockingly, annually North American properties use greater than 1 billion kilos of pesticides on lawns, gardens, and even inside properties. And what’s worse? Residential owners use about thrice the quantity of pesticides as farmers.
Controlling your backyard pests naturally isn’t simply higher for the surroundings, it’s inexpensive, too. So, permit your backyard to develop and give you produce that’s secure for you and your loved ones. Take a look at the next suggestions, beginning with pest prevention.
This text incorporates affiliate hyperlinks. If you buy an merchandise by one among these hyperlinks, we obtain a small fee that helps fund our Recycling Listing.
Discourage Pests From Your Backyard
Many (new) gardeners could not notice this, however the best approach to maintain bugs away and forestall injury to your backyard from pests is to discourage them from ever coming within the first place. Listed here are a couple of preventative suggestions that can assist you get began with a wholesome backyard:
- Pull out any weak vegetation. Whether or not they’re contaminated or not, weak vegetation will entice pests, so it’s best to do away with them as quickly as potential.
- Use wholesome, natural soil. Strive your hand at composting, or on the very least purchase good, natural soil at your native gardening retailer. By doing so and incorporating a pure fertilizer, you can be on the highway to growing sturdy and vigorous vegetation.
- Strive utilizing seaweed mulch. It is a new one for a lot of, however seaweed incorporates hint parts of iron, barium, calcium, sulfur, and magnesium, all of which promote wholesome growth in vegetation.
- Hold foliage dry. Your finest wager is to water early within the day to ensure that foliage to be dry for a lot of the day. If potential, set up a drip irrigation system with a purpose to ship water on to the foundation methods with out wetting the foliage. This additionally helps you preserve water.

Introduce Helpful Bugs
One other nice approach to maintain undesirable backyard pests away naturally is to introduce helpful bugs to prey on dangerous, garden-destroying bugs and their larvae. There are numerous completely different species which can be nice for particular issues, together with the next:
- Ichneumon wasps: These useful bugs destroy leaf-eating caterpillars.
- Ladybugs: These colourful bugs are good for eliminating aphids, mites, whiteflies, and scale.
- Lacewings: Introduce these bugs into your backyard if you want to do away with aphids and different frequent sorts of insect pests.
- Praying mantis: The praying mantis will eat most pests that infiltrate your backyard.
- Helpful nematodes: These roundworms are efficient in opposition to cutworms, beetles, and root weevil larvae.
These are only a few pure strategies that can assist you maintain away and rid your backyard of annoying pests. There are quite a few eco-friendly merchandise available on the market right this moment that may assist you maintain your backyard wholesome, completely happy, and secure for you, and your pets.

Editor’s notice: Initially printed on June 26, 2015, this text was up to date in Could 2025.