What is sustainable pest management?
Pests are a problem in every walk of life. Whether you’ve seen a mouse run across your floor, or have watched your entire vegetable patch be decimated by an unknown something; you’ll know the frustration of dealing with pests.
For most people the first thought is the exterminators, eliminate the problem for good. However, eliminating one issue doesn’t mean that a new batch of mice won’t visit in a few months or years.
That’s why many people are turning to sustainable pest management; your local pest control firm can help you to find out more.
What Is Sustainable Pest Control
We’ve established that pests can do a lot of damage and even carry diseases which could affect your health.
However, what you need to appreciate is that your garden is where pest problems start. The more attractive your garden is to pests, the more likely it is that the pests will arrive and migrate into your home.
But, that shouldn’t stop you having an attractive garden.
Sustainable pest control means taking measures in your garden to reduce or eliminate the pest issue before they even start looking at your house. There are several ways of doing this:
- Sacrificial Plants
If you know that you have an issue with white fly then you can plant cabbage plants that will attract the whitefly and keep them away from your other plants. Providing you maintain your cabbage crop the whitefly have no reason to attack other plants in your garden.
That’s sacrificial plants, they are deliberately sacrificed to save the other plants in your garden.
- Planting The Right Stuff
Another option is to plant protective plants. Again, this is sustainable as the plants will keep on deterring the pests and you won’t need to do anything!
Plants such as mint, lemon, and citronella are very effective at keeping pests like mosquitoes away. Simply plant these at the edge of your garden or the edge of your house and you’ll have a sustainable pest management solution!
- Larger Pests
It is also possible to use larger pests to control smaller pests. For example, frogs love a wide variety of bugs, having a couple in your garden can really help to keep the number of flies, mosquitoes, and even beetles to a low level.
But, before you start dropping larger pests into your garden, you do need to be sure that they’re not going to create a bigger problem!
- Remove It!
If you’re growing fruit and vegetables then you need to remove them as soon as they are ripe. Leaving them to over-ripen will make them sweet smelling and extremely desirable to several types of flies and other pests.
The same is true if you have weeds growing in your plant beds, they can also attract additional pests; removing the weeds will help sustain your garden.
Sustainable pest control isn’t about doing less to control the pests, it’s about using nature and natural products to create pest control methods that work; leaving you free to enjoy the garden.
