From Guest Blogger Christine Rudolph: Removing Pest Infestations from Your Garden So As To Preserve the Environment

Gardening is a worthy hobby as well as a beautiful way to decorate and garnish the outside of your house. Planting is always considered as the best source of a healthy environment both for the entire ecosystem and your surroundings. But what’s a nightmare is the thought of having insects and pests in your garden. Getting rid of these tiny evils is one hard thing to do. You have got to get a good hold on the life cycling and categories of the insects before applying any method to eliminate them, as there are a bunch of insects that are actually good for your gardening, because they act as predators to those plant eating pests.

Know Your Insects
Before opting for any kind of pest killing method, it is a prime need to examine and understand the pests as well as the plants you are keeping. Not every method of pest killing can be effective on every insect and not every insect is deathly for your plants. There are numerous plant insects like white flies, aphids, blossom midge, kissing bugs, eggs of snails and slugs, sap beetles, leaf rollers, spider mites, lace bugs, thrips, and soil dwelling bugs. Understand the behavior of the pests your garden has and then opt for chemical pesticides to end the threat.

Keeping Simple Handy Precautions
Various tiny precautions may add helping hand to end the chances of having insects in your garden. Cleaning is the most important job here, as cleaning helps reduce the chance of the growth of any bug – be it in your garden or inside your house.

• Preferring clean and tiny pots and planters over dirty pots each time you do a repotting is a key towards healthy plant growth.
• Keep a good look on your plants is a must. Checking daily if your plants are sad are not, that is, if their leaves are healthy looking or drying up.
• Watering your plants is another key towards successful gardening. Watering too much or too little kills the plants both ways, and helps the insects to feed on the dead ends as well.
• If you see any dead leaf, flower or any part that is rotting up, cut it instantly to avoid the whole plant from decaying. If the leaf is dying because of any insect, cutting that up instantly will cut the link of the insect from the rest of your plant.
• Lastly, try to keep your plants clean. Spraying lukewarm water on each and every leaf and removing the dust from its parts can also play a minor role in keeping your plants not just healthy but also curable from the pests.

Aluminum Foils and Row Covers
If your garden is huge and contains many crops and plants, aluminum foiling them is a great way to help your plants from insects. Though this process will fall a bit heavy on your pockets, this method is quite recognizable worldwide and works as well. Row covers on the other hands permit the entrance of air, water, and light to the plants, and prohibited the reach of pests and insects. You may need to remove the covers after few weeks if the temperature below the covers gets too hot for plantation.

Using Pesticides
The last and most effective option to kill the insects is of course pesticides. But not every pesticide is friendly to your plants, because some of these drugs can kill your plants along with the insects. Therefore, using the right product on your plant is the key. Keep in mind not to just spray the plants and leave them as it is. Checking your plant ones in a while is important. Also, check the pesticides label before spraying on the product. Make sure that the plant you’re spraying on and the insects you are willing to kill are both listed in the pesticides’ label. And don’t forget to only spray the plant or crop that is damaged, you don’t need to spray the whole garden because this will be dangerous for the healthy plants.