With Spring temperatures rising daily it won’t be long before a new wave of crawling, wriggling and flying invertebrates make their way to our gardens to see what juicy new fare we’ve thoughtfully supplied them with.

Always remember, though, that there are an equal number of beneficial insects (not to mention birds, amphibians and mammals) out there in the garden, so any artificial intervention, even of the organic variety, needs to be well targeted and used with thought and care. So without further ado…

Companion planting.

This is where you truly get the plants to do the work for you, and is particularly useful (essential even) when growing vegetables.

Very many plants contain an array of chemicals that have evolved as natural insect defence mechanisms. Different chemicals occur in different plants and in different parts of plants too, and there are a huge number of proven combinations that will have a dramatic effect on pest numbers in the garden.

A few examples include:

Basil, planted with tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, asparagus or any ornamental susceptible to aphid damage; borage, also with tomatoes as well as strawberries; garlic with cucumber, peas, lettuce, carrots & celery; alliums with fruit trees; geraniums with roses and all brassicas.

Attract the predators.

Whilst you might imagine that the presence of, say, aphids or Cabbage White caterpillars in your garden will be enough to draw the crowds of beneficial insects, these helpful beasties also require additional food sources, particularly pollen and nectar rich flowers.

A number of herbs, including borage, chamomile, hyssop, lovage, and in particular thyme are extremely attractive to a hoverflies, bees, wasps and parasitic wasps, all of whom you most definitely want on-side.

Ladybirds and lacewings – both amongst the most voracious or garden predators – will flock to angelica, yarrow, dill, fennel, tansy and coriander.

Birds will be drawn by bird-feeders and water, and amphibians by the presence of a pond, and all will stay to dispatch countless pests.

Mollusc barriers.

Snails and slugs hate crossing sharp, spiky materials and surrounding individual plants or indeed entire beds will create a natural boundary that keeps the molluscs out.

Grit and crushed eggshells are often used, but ceramic shards go one better by actually absorbing the mucus trail of any slug or snail that attempts top breach the defence, preventing any slimy progress.

Meanwhile, outside the barrier you can lay down traps to collect the little beasties. Stones, wood, carpet, or any dark, flat object that well keep moist through the day will provide an ideal hideout for slugs and snails and handily concentrates them ready for collection. Good old-fashioned beer traps – jam-jars or old yoghurt pots half-filled with beer and part-sunk into the ground – will also collect droves of drunken drowned molluscs.

Garlic and chilli spray.

This is a pretty well known brew with a wide variety of recipes and an even wider variety of garden applications. The basic idea is to combine two of natures most powerful and pungent agents into one pest-fighting force. Take 2 whole bulbs of garlic with half a dozen small, hot chillies, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, 1 dessertspoon of liquid soap (to improve adhesion) and 3 cups of water.  Blend the whole mixture thoroughly, strain out the lumps and then add an additional 4 cups of water to dilute the liquid for spraying.

The garlic will deter almost everything from attempting to eat any foliage that has been so treated, whilst the fiery chilli will kill all sap-suckers and leaf-munchers on contact, so you get a double whammy effect. This heady mixture may burn young foliage, so you might want to dilute further, or test on a small section first.

Batter red spider mites.

Batter? Surprisingly perhaps I’m not suggesting coshing mites over their tiny arachnid heads, but am actually referring to the kitchen variety batter. A few tablespoons of flour, blended together with around a cup each of milk and water will smother and suffocate Red Spider Mite – a particularly pernicious little pest that thrives in dry conditions and in greenhouses.

Soap.

Liquid detergents (i.e. washing up liquid) are well known for smothering and killing aphids and various other sap-suckers. The trouble is that the surfactants in most detergents do not readily break down in the environment, and have been shown to cause more problems than some herbicides and pesticides. Vegetable based liquid soaps, however, will do just the same job without any of the potential hazards. The soap and water mix won’t do much to deter future pests and will quite quickly dissipate, but can provide the ideal instant solution for a newly-spotted infestation.

Rhubarb tea.

The leaves of Rhubarb plants contain natural toxins that you can easily employ in the fight against aphids, white fly and caterpillars.

All you need to do is harvest some of leaves, chop them into small-ish pieces, add some water and bring to the boil. Leave the mixture to steep for a few days, after which time you can strain and bottle the juice which can be sprayed over the plants with the problem pests. The juice should be diluted to the colour of weak tea and the addition of a few drops of liquid soap will encourage it to stick to the foliage more effectively.

Molasses and vinegar.

Another rather unlikely spray that is easily put together uses a blend of 1 tablespoon of molasses with ¼ litre of vinegar and ¾ litre of water. This can be applied on a weekly basis to any and all plants (edible and otherwise) that are susceptible to predation by sawflies, moths or butterflies and should prevent eggs from being laid and cut the cycle off before it even starts.

Sticky yellow stuff.

Infestations of Whitefly can be particularly tricky to deal with and extremely damaging if left untreated. Unlike many insect pests they are highly mobile and readily fly away from most attempts to knock them out with one of the various vegetable sprays listed above.

Their weakness, though, is the colour yellow to which they are highly attracted.

To make an effective Whitefly trap all you need do is find something bright yellow – plastic or a chunk of painted wood will do just fine – coat with something sticky and water-repellent, such as Vaseline or vegetable wax, locate amongst your whitefly infestation and you have yourself a natural whitefly trap.

Fingers and eyes.

Although last on this list, really this should be the first option. The most obvious and easiest of all solutions to roll out, very many infestations can be stopped in their tracks by a keen eye and a squishing finger. Slugs and snails can readily be collected with a spoon on damp evenings and vine weevils picked from foliage by torchlight, whilst the likes of aphids, scale insects, lily beetles and caterpillars should be hunted down in daylight.