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The first question I am always asked about organic gardening is what to do about the bugs. How can you garden organically without bugs? How can I get rid of bugs how can I get rid of bugs organically that are bugging me?
The most important thing we should all know about bugs is that 97% of them are beneficial (that’s the estimate I’ve always been told.) That means only 3% of the bugs cause every annoying bug problem in our garden!
Bugs are Good
The other 97% of bugs do good things for our garden. We dont want to get rid of the bugs even organically. Bugs pollinate our plants so that we have fruits. Bugs kill other bugs that kill our plants. They dig up the soil making it more suitable for growing things, and making nutrients available to those things. Bugs carry away the remnants of dead plants, and clean up stressed plants either because of the wrong season, location, or some other stressor.
A Bee Pollinates a Blue Salvia. We don’t want to get rid of this bug that pollinates flowers!
Bugs are beautiful and useful. One of our favorite bugs, butterflies, can sip nectar, gather pollen, and please our senses.
Pesticides are Bad for Humans
Many times people have the mindset that we must conquer those boogers that are eating our plants or causing us problems. Out come the pesticides. Mosquitos bite us, roaches are gross, ants bite us, beetles must be bad by association, right? How can I get rid of the insects that are bugging me organically? We must kill them all!
The “kill them all” or the “how can I get rid of bugs organically” mindsets sells lots and lots of pesticides and keeps many pest control companies in business. Pesticides put lots of poorly tested chemicals in the air and in the soil. Researchers found 13 of 14 biomarkers of contemporary pesticides in measurable concentrations in more than 50% of urine samples, indicating widespread exposure.
These chemicals can hurt us as humans even as we try to kill all the bugs. Using chemical pesticides is harming our health in many ways both known and unknown. Prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides has been associated with impaired child development. What other effects are all those pesticides having?
Pesticides Can Cause Microbes to Die
One result of trying to get rid of all the bugs is that it kills microbes unintentionally. The microbes in the soils are really important! According to Young and Crawford in Science magazine, one handful of garden soil can contain more organisms than the number of humans who have ever lived: 1 trillion bacteria (10 to the 12th), 10,000 protozoa, 10,000 nematodes and 25 km of fungi! All of those little guys are spending their lifetimes working to create the soil that grows the food that sustains us.
Pesticides Kill Good and Bad Bugs Alike
Beneficial insects die when you use the “kill them all” or “get rid of the insects that are bugging me” approach. As I said, 97% of them help us! If you use a non-selective pesticide, whether it is chemical or organic, you are killing off a bunch of bugs that are beneficial. Note that this is true even when you use an organic pesticide. Unless you use a pesticide aimed at one specific pest, you will kill beneficial insects.
Not only that but you are allowing the pesky bugs to proliferate because you are killing off the insects that eat the pesky ones. It is much better to deal with bugs another way.
Get Rid of Pesky Bugs without Using Pesticides
To manage pesky insects (remember this is only 3% of the insects), start with healthy soil. Insects tend to attack stressed plants because they are too dry, too wet, too hot, too cold, or lacking in the nutrients they need. If a plant is very healthy, insects go looking for another plant. You discourage just the kind of bug you don’t want.
Begin with creating maximum health of plants starting from the soil up. Refer to my “Begin Here” post on how to do this.
Some bugs only seem pesky. Leaf miners, for instance, chew through leaves, but they don’t kill the host plant and cause little damage other than cosmetic. Using a wide-spectrum pesticide to try to eradicate this bug ends up doing a lot of damage for very little benefit.
Now I admit, when I’ve just been bit by a fire ant, I’m spitting mad and ready to pull out the big guns. I’m ready to get rid of those bugs. Still, I have noticed that there are benefits even to fire ants. An old fire ant mound is very easy to shovel and makes very good garden soil.
Getting rid of bugs organically doesn’t require chemicals. Even the dastardly fire ant cannot withstand a simple bacteria, spinosad. I use the product, made up of spinosad, called Come and Get It to manage my fire ants.
The following sections discuss several other methods of managing pesky insects.
Get Rid of Pesky Bugs with Mechanical Means
You can use mechanical means or physical barriers to keep harmful insects at bay. Strategically covering your plants with a floating row cover can keep the insects away. In this case, you must remove the cover when your plants need to be pollinated.
Another time-honored practice is to pick off harmful insects. Tomato hornworms chomp on tomato plants. Luckily for us, they are big enough that they are easy to see (except that their color blends in with tomato foliage), and you can pick them off. Drop them in a bucket of soapy water. Snails are another pest that can be picked off to prevent further plant damage.
Get Rid of Pesky Bugs with Repellents
You can use repellents such as garlic juice or citrus oil. This might make sense when you have stink bugs poking holes in your tomatoes. Here’s a link for how to create a garlic juice spray.
In the repellent category as well as the “building the health of the plants” category is a spray called Garrett juice, invented by Howard Garrett, the Dirt Doctor himself. Here is a link to a homemade version of Garrett Juice.
Use any repellents with care because they can harm both beneficial insects and foliage if used incorrectly.
Use Beneficial Insects
A final means is to introduce beneficial insects. An example of this method is buying ladybugs to release which will eat aphids and keep damage to plants by aphids to a minimum. Another example is trichogramma wasps which bore into the eggs of more than 200 species of moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) which are leaf eaters in their caterpillar stage. Examples of such garden pests include armyworm, cabbage looper, cutworm, borers, corn earworm, and codling moth caterpillar.
Where to go from here . . .
For more information on bugs, I like Malcolm Beck and Howard Garret’s book on bugs: Texas Bug Book : The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.
You can use this book to help you identify which pest you have and then figure out a plan to deal with that pest. Using a plan that specifically targets your pest can help save the lives of many beneficial insects.
I hope I have inspired you to put away the non-selective, chemical pesticides. You don’t have to get rid of bugs organically or otherwise! Bugs won’t bug you if you take care of your soil, maintain the health of your plants, and use a strategic plan to deal with the remaining pests.