5 Organic Methods to Control Pests in Your Garden, Finally a Way to Fight Back!.

What's going on growers, it's James Persiglione coming to you live from Jersey. Finally, a way to fight back against pests that are stealing our harvests. Today, I want to share with you five organic methods to control pests in your garden. Let's go. Let's just jump right into the organic methods by dealing with an issue that I'm having right now in the garden. As I bring you down, we'll take a look at this brassica. And it's pretty evident that this purple cabbage is being attacked. And after I look at the leaves and stuff, I can identify which particular insect this is. And that's the first step to actually dealing with these problems. Identify what pest is, is the culprit. So just by looking at the leaf pattern, as I meant the holes in the leaves and some of the issues, I know that this is the cabbage worm. I've had issues with it in the past. So what I want to do is learn the different life cycles and the stages of the cabbage worm. And I know that the cabbage worm, it really comes out early because I can see the cabbage white butterflies, that's the adult stage of the cabbage worm. The white butterflies, you can see it right here as they fly around. They land on the cabbages, your brassicas, your broccolis, all that stuff, lay their eggs and the larvae are the cabbage worm that actually eat this. So to deal with this issue, I'm going to use the first organic method, which is a spray. Organic sprays are the first method that I'm going over for controlling pests. But it shouldn't be your first choice. I want to just make sure that I'm equipping you with tools that you can use if you have an issue like I do back there already, like that brassica where it's being attacked by those cabbage worms. So when you do run into an issue, there are so many different kinds of organic sprays that we can use. But the idea is when we identify a pest, we like to use a spray that is as specific to that pest as possible. This way we're only going for that one thing and we're not harming anything else. So when it comes to brassicas, you can see how beautiful these ones look here. So on these brassicas, I know they're a little older, but I've been using a specific spray which goes right for the caterpillars. This is Thuracide BT. This is an organic spray and it goes for a lot of the caterpillars, especially these cabbage worms. And this spray is completely organic. It's just made from unnatural bacteria found in the soil. It works extremely well, especially for these cabbage worms. And I've been using it the last couple of years. It has made a considerable difference in my garden. I'm doing this video early because I want a lot of you to try to use this if you're, if you're into organic gardening and you want to try a spray on your brassicas and stuff, I think it'll make a considerable difference for you guys. If you're in a circumstance that you know there's pest damage, but you're not sure what the specific culprit is, then you can use a more broad spectrum spray. And some of these sprays you can even just make at home. So what I'm going to show you here is a garlic oil spray that I'm going to put together. And this is a good overall broad spectrum spray. So to make this is pretty simple. What we're going to start with is some garlic. We need about 10 to 15 cloves for what we're making here. So first I'm just going to break this garlic apart. And we're using garlic for specific reasons. This garlic has in it a compound called allicin and that compound helps to confuse insects and also helps to repel them a little bit. But we're not just going to use garlic and water like some people do. We're going to use a few different things, including this mineral oil. I'll talk a little bit about that as I add it. So let's get these garlic all broken up. And what we're going to do is take them, just remove the shell like that, and we're going to finely chop this. So I'm just going to go in and basically chop it as fine as I can without going crazy. And we're going to do this for all 15 of those cloves, then I'll show you what it looks like when we're finished. There we go. The garlic is all finely chopped up, looking good. Another reason the garlic is so great is because it contains sulfur in it and sulfur is like a natural antifungal. So this will help for some fungal issues, too, which is great. After we have this diced up, though, we're going to take a jar like this. I'm going to add in some mineral oil. And the oil is great because just an oil on its own, even like an olive oil or vegetable oil or something, they will actually kill and injure some insects, their larvae and their eggs. So this is effective against the eggs and stuff. And what the oil also does is it it makes it so that the insects like lose their supply of oxygen. It kind of like coats them and stuff. So that helps a lot with just that. Just an oil spray will help in your garden. But the oils will also help to spread the garlic spray that I'm going to use more evenly over the plants. So we're going to use about a pint of mineral oil in here and then about 15 cloves. Next, I'm just going to put all this garlic into here, into the mineral oil. After I have this all filled up, we're going to let this sit for 24 hours. So after that sits for 24 hours, I did this yesterday, one that I have already done. It's going to look like this. So this is set for 24 hours. Next, we're going to take this garlic oil and we're going to strain the garlic out of it. Now that we've got all the oils and everything we need out of the actual garlic, we're going to strain it. Missed a little bit there. That's OK. And you can make this mixture more potent if you want. This is just the style I like to do it. Next, we're going to have some water right here. We're going to take this garlic oil mixture and add it to water so we can, you know, get a little more out of it. Now, what I just did was mixed oil and water. So they're not going to go together because they don't mix. So what we're going to be doing is adding some dish soap. So this dish soap, it's going to act as a way to kind of blend the two mixtures together, but it's also beneficial, too. So you could make a spray with just water and dish soap, and that will help to kill off some insects. It'll help paralyze them and stuff. So on its own, it's a decent spray as oil is on its own, a decent spray. So we're going to put enough of this in until they start to blend together. So I'm going to just squeeze some in and then mix it up. I want to make sure the two are blended. I don't have a lot of like sitting oil. And a good way to find that out is I'll leave it like this for about 30 seconds to a minute and see how much of the oil floats up to the top and separates. So this is a great broad spectrum spray that I consider relatively weak in a way. But if you want something similar to this, that's much stronger and, in my opinion, more effective than what you can use is 100 percent cold press neem oil. So this neem oil is is great stuff. The way we set it up is the same way we're going to set up the garlic oil spray. So I did this last year in a video. You guys may have seen it where it's the oil, the water and the soap all mixed together. So the garlic spray, if we were to use it on itself, wouldn't be super effective. But when we mix the oil with it, the soap with it and the garlic, the three together make a pretty a pretty decent spray. When we do that with the neem oil, it's even more powerful because the neem oil contains within it something called azadirachtin. And this is why the 100 percent neem oil is so important. You don't want to get the neem oil sprays that are pre-mixed that you buy from the stores, because a lot of times they don't have the azadirachtin. It has to have the azadirachtin. That's what's going to, you know, negatively affect a lot of your insects. And this is another broad spectrum one that is organic. It's safe. It's it's not really that harmful and beneficial. It doesn't really affect the bees unless you spray them directly. So whenever you're using sprays, organic sprays or any sprays, there's a few things you want to take into account. First, you want to make sure that you're using that spray on one small control section, maybe just one or two plants. This way you could try it out. You don't want to spray it on the whole garden because if there's an issue, you don't want to lose everything. Another thing is you never want to spray at the hottest part of the days. You don't want to spray midday. You want to spray either in the morning. But my favorite is later at night when all the beneficials have gone in. So that's really important. And when it comes to neem oil, I use this for so many different things. This is my favorite overall broad spectrum spray. I can see that the oil is still separated a lot there. So I'm just going to pour a little bit more soap in. Then I'm going to mix it and then we'll start spraying. Get that on, mix it back up. I'm not going into exact details of the mixtures for this because, you know, it's all going to be dependent upon how you want to use it, but know that a lot of things we're using on their own. They're not going to really be dangerous. So we're OK. Let's take this. Now it's mixed up. We're going to add it to our sprayer and then we're just going to go around and spray some of our plants. It's going to use some of this garlic spray and these lettuces. And this can also work as a preventative, this garlic. So ideally, I want to be spraying it right now that it's kind of midday. I just wanted to give you guys an example of me spraying it there. And these brassicas I'm going to spray with the BT later if I have issues, because that's very specific to that. While the neem oil and the garlic spray, they're more broad spectrum. So the first method for controlling pests in your garden is to use organic sprays. And what spray you should use is dependent upon what insects you're going to be going after and what you're actually growing. The second method for controlling pests in your garden is to use physical controls. One of my favorite and one of the most simple ones is just an insect barrier. So there's nothing more basic than just some insect barrier like this, which is going to prevent any of those small insects, like even the larger ones, actually, like cabbage white butterflies and stuff. This is going to prevent them from landing on the brassicas and even laying their eggs in the first place. So this is very simple and very effective. And it even has multiple functions. I even put this up when it was windy one day to help just dissipate some of the wind so it wasn't so hard on the plants. But this is really simple, really effective to do. That's why I actually have this this hoop house frame built over top of this so I can use an insect netting like this. And they're pretty cheap, too. I'll put a link down in the description for the ones I'm using. And you can get the one that fits for your particular bed. Another physical control that everyone should be utilizing. And this is the physical control that I suggest people put in before they put one thing in the ground. So simple to have. But you need to make sure you have really good fencing and fencing will make a huge difference as we come along here. Not only will it protect from all those animal pests, but it also be a great place to grow up. So I use these fences not only for protection, but also for food. And you can see right here where I'm using the insect netting here to keep the birds away. In the past, the birds have come and destroyed all my peas. So this time of year, I'd have just little short peas that were just decimated. Now we've got this insect netting up. It's letting a good amount of light in and the birds, they can't get to it. So we're going to be eating more peas. The third organic method for controlling pests in your garden is with beneficial insects. And the simplest and most fun way to do this is by planting a bunch of flowering species. So those flowering species are going to bring in a lot of predatory insects that are going to predate and eat on a lot of those those pests that we have in the garden that we don't want around. Another thing you can do, which is more hands on, which I've done in the past. And I've shown you is you can go out and harvest some insects locally. So right here, you'll notice we've got a praying mantis nest. And this nest was put in just naturally by the praying mantis. They laid it in the late fall and it'll open up this spring. So a few years ago I went out locally and I found a bunch of praying mantis nests. I'd say about five or six around the woods. I brought them back to my food forest. I stuck them in a section where I knew there was going to be a lot of bugs. And now over the years, they just constantly are laying more nests and just live in this environment. So it's great to have those free employees that are always working for me. I don't really pay them. They just eat insects. There's no health insurance and and they just do incredible work for me here. Another thing I've done in the past is I've actually purchased some insects where I've put in some ladybugs. I can't guarantee that that has worked as well as the praying mantis. But I do like to try to balance things out a little more if I can sometimes. So bringing those insects in, I think, you know, brings a little bit more of that natural balance back because I am in a suburban setting and, you know, I think it can't hurt. So using beneficial insects to our advantage. It's not hard. It's fun. And, you know, you can just grab some stuff locally. The fourth organic method for controlling pests in your garden is with good variety selection. So when it comes to annuals, perennials, you want to make sure you're taking some time to choose varieties that will do well in your particular environment. So the reason we want good variety selection is because plants that do well in your environment are going to ultimately be healthier and then lead to less pest issues. You can also look for some plants that actually have some pest resistance, but plants that have a disease resistance are also good, too. Because going back to kind of like what I just said, if you have a plant that, you know, is commonly going to get a disease in your area, if you order a disease resistant variety, then that plant maybe won't develop that disease and then maybe it won't get some pests. So basically, plants often will get attacked by pests when they're weak. So if we can have strong, healthy plants, then we won't have to deal with that pest issue, too. So it's kind of like dealing with the issue before it starts and variety selection is a great way to do that. One thing I want to mention, too, is variety selection is important for our annuals and stuff. But when it comes to fruit trees and perennials, variety selection is one of the most important things about growing them. And we have to take advantage of variety selection as growers. It's one of our greatest advantages and one of our greatest tools. The fifth organic method for controlling pests in your garden is what I call tricks and creativity. So the first trick that I have has to do with these red rocks here. So I'm looking at the strawberries in this section here. We've got two beautiful rows growing, and I can't wait till the strawberries start to come out. But once the strawberries start to come out and before they're red, while they're the small little strawberries, what I like to do is take these red river rocks that I painted and I like to put them out in a section like this. The idea is when the strawberries, before they're red and ripe, that the birds come down and that they peck at these rocks. I'm not going to put them out yet because it's still early, but they peck at these rocks and then they notice they can't get any, any water or anything out of it. So then when the strawberries do actually come out, they don't go after the strawberries because they think they're just rocks too. So I can't guarantee that this works, but with organic gardening and basically all these forms of organic pest management, it's not that anything is going to work 100 percent every time. It's that it, it helps incrementally. So basically, if I put these rocks out and I can increase my yield in strawberries by 10 or maybe 15 percent, I consider that a definite win, especially for how little work these actually are to make. Very simple and just fun to put out too. I consider companion planting another trick or form of creativity too. So in this section right here, this is where I plant my tomatoes and I trellis them up, grow them up the strings here. And between where I plant tomatoes, you'll notice I've got garlic planted in every section that I'm going to be planting tomatoes right between it. So we talked about earlier how garlic has these compounds and properties that help repel some insects. So the idea is that we're going to get the advantage of the garlic while the garlic is actually growing. So we're getting that, that attribute or function of repellents from pests while actually getting the harvest too. So it's, you know, thinking ahead a little more. And I think a smarter way to do some pest management. That's why I consider it like to be maybe a little tricky. So there's other ways we can do companion planting. I'm doing a number of other ways too. So I consider that to be more tricks. And there's so many more forms of creativity to work at pests. Let me know in the comments what kind of tricks and stuff that you guys like to use in your garden that make a big difference. That's today's video growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I've said it before, but the greatest thing about the garden is that it's a paradise for all. And the worst thing about the garden is that it's a paradise for all, for the pests, for the bugs, for all different kind of birds and all the things like that. So we have to make sure we're vigilant, that we're not naive and we stay on top of things, that we're constantly coming out through the garden, monitoring how things are doing, observing, learning, and then changing up what we need to do, you know, dependent upon what the garden tells us. We got to go out there and let it speak to us a little bit and kind of understand that we might have to change some things. Do a few little organic practices here and there, some sprays and stuff. But those things all combine together where you can get a good organic pest management schedule. It'll make a considerable difference. You'll be getting way bigger harvests. It'll make everything just a lot more fun. Before I let you guys go, I wanted to thank a few new channel members, part of Team Grow. And that's Jose Ortiz, who was one of the first to sign up. Thank you, my friend. And also Victoria Young-Katzmann, I believe her name is. And I just want to thank you guys for the support. It means a lot to me and Tuck. We love doing this kind of stuff. And to be able to, you know, bring these videos to you guys as much as we do. And, you know, nothing brings us more joy. So this guy is out here every single day for every video. And I talked about beneficial insects a little bit in one section of the video. But what I didn't mention was beneficial animals. So Tuck is the greatest beneficial animal that we have in the garden. So this guy never really rests. He's always at work chasing out some of the birds, chasing out all the, you know, the groundhogs and stuff. You guys remember last year where we had a groundhog that was attacking a lot of our brassicas? This guy cornered the groundhog and then we were able to able to get a net, trap him and remove the groundhog. So this guy really saved the garden this year. And it's not his first time. I'm sure he'll have some more heroics this year, too. So this guy is really the heart of the channel. We love him a lot. He's also a leader. So if you guys enjoyed the video, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share with your friends. Don't forget to check out the merch down low. And remember, whenever you guys are on Amazon, start your shopping with our Amazon affiliate link. It doesn't cost you anything. Tuck and James will be back to you again real soon. We out!