Home gardens are a delightful place for outdoor gatherings, staycations, and enjoying the outdoors in general. The radiance and vibrancy of plants create a refreshing environment at home.
While having a garden is excellent for your property’s appearance, pests and plant diseases may destroy your garden’s beauty. To ensure the well-being of your garden, consider these ten helpful tips.
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Check Plants Before Buying Them
Stores specializing in gardening offer a wide variety of plants and flowers that might be suitable for your garden aesthetic. But before you bring in the new greenery to your garden, thoroughly inspect if the plants are healthy and pest- or rot-free. Introducing weak plants into your garden is an opportunity for the disease to spread to your other plants.
Other than leaves and branches, check for the roots of the plants. Roots that are firm and white mean the plant is healthy. If you see dark and soft roots, then it’s wise not to bring them into your home. You don’t want to introduce a plant epidemic in your garden.
Cultivate Your Soil
Keeping your soil healthy is crucial in maintaining plants that can fight diseases and pests. Cultivate your soil by top-dressing it with compost and natural fertilizer—layer organic soil on your potted plants to keep pests and weeds away. Create your mulch from wood chippings, sawdust, coffee grounds, tea leaves, pencil shavings, and rice shells.
Suppose you live in an area where construction frequently happens. Till your soil to get rid of fragments of cement, brick, and other building debris as they cause dry soil, leading to an unhealthy growth of plants.
Grow Where The Sun Is
All plants need the right amount of sunlight to thrive. While some plants can manage without much sunlight, it is vital to position your greenery where most sunlight hit. Your lovely plants will benefit from their sunlight exposure as it keeps them healthy and strong to fight off diseases.
Flowers also bloom their prettiest during the day. Lush greeneries also get their verdant hues from the sun. If you look at the foliage of Celadon Park’s garden area, they are healthy and vibrant. It’s because the development’s amenity area is on a sunny spot. The plants, trees, and flowers also add natural statements to the modern facilities of the complex.
Water Early In The Day
Watering during the day may seem tedious, but it does wonders for your garden. First, your plants will be well-hydrated by the time it gets hot. They’ll less likely wilt and attract pests. Next, the heat of the sun will dry out the moisture by afternoon and night. Damp plants attract pests such as slugs, worms, snails, and earwigs.
Learn which plants need daily watering and which need sparse watering. Overwatering certain plants may cause them to wilt, get sick, and attract bugs and other pests. Weeds and mushrooms may also sprout from the moist ground, absorbing the nutrients supposedly for your plants.
Build Fences Around Your Garden
Bugs, weeds, and fungi aren’t the only pests you should avoid. If you live close to a forest area, bigger animals like deer, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, and some birds may be far worse pests that will ruin your garden. Protect your beloved vegetables and plants by building a fence around your property to keep these animals at bay. Use row covers or cloches to protect your plants from pesky birds that will try to beak their way through your fruits and flowers.
Prune Your Greenery
Check your plants for wilted leaves, branches, or roots. Cut them to keep diseases from infecting other plants. Clean out any plant debris, especially leaves that fell after a storm or due to strong winds.
The golds and reds of fallen leaves may add the perfect statement for your social media feed, but leaving them in your garden for too long may cause pests and mold to grow on the dead leaves.
Handpick The Bad Bugs
Picking bugs may be one of the most disgusting tasks, but it helps in keeping your plants happy and healthy. Use gardening gloves to pick caterpillars, slugs, snails, beetles, and hornworms. Gloves not only save you from the gross, slimy feeling of these pests, but they also protect you from harmful secretions and itch-causing fibers.
Invite Some Friends To Your Garden
If the pests are too many for you to handpick, invite some friendly bugs and animals to help you clear out the pesky creepy crawlies. Add a bowl of water, or a makeshift toad house from a pot, to attract frogs and toads to eat the insects that damage your plants. Birds can also be your allies against unwanted pests. Install a birdfeed and birdbath to lure them into your yard.
Bugs such as ladybugs, praying mantises, hoverflies, lacewings, honeybees, and dragonflies eat harmful insects. If you see them in your yard, leave them be as they are a sign of a healthy garden. They also save you the hassle of handpicking the pests yourself.
Use Eco-Friendly And Safer Pesticides
Sometimes, handpicking pests and attracting your garden friends aren’t enough to keep your plants healthy. Pesticides are an effective solution to purging the harmful critters, but their noxious fumes may be fatal to your health and the environment. Spraying pesticides on your vegetables and fruit trees may also be toxic to your system.
Make environment-friendly pesticides from garlic, red peppers, soap, horticultural oil, and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). These safely get rid of the annoying pests ruining your plants. Add a diatomaceous earth layer on your soil to kill and dry out potato beetles, squash bugs, slugs, snails, aphids, and whiteflies. Use a mask when applying this as it may irritate the lungs.
Give Your Plants Space
Let your plants breathe better by giving them space. Allot a few inches between your potted plants and your patch so your plants won’t smother each other. Proper air circulation is vital in keeping pests away. Most harmful insects like to take shelter in tightly-packed plants as they are hidden from predators. Giving your plants space also prevents any potential disease from spreading faster.
Maintaining a healthy and pest-free garden isn’t an easy job, but taking note of these tips will keep any harmful pests at bay.