Food-Gardening Lessons From A Wartime Victory Garden

What Are Your Best Tips for Natural Pesticides?

“What are your best tips for natural pesticides?” Question from Jacquelyn O’Neil

Answer: It depends on the pest. Generally, we recommend purchasing OMRI Listed products approved for organic gardening. But, we also advocate managing pests through IPM (integrated pest management) to keep populations down without the need for harsh chemicals. Integrated pest management employs a variety of tactical techniques for pest control (see infographic below). Monitoring plants, keeping them in good health, and catching pest problems early on will stop pests before they take over.

We also recommend keeping your plants, pots, and topsoil surface clean and refreshed and dead, dying, or infested stems pruned off. It is amazing what a little cleanliness can do to keeping plants pest-free. (Click here to learn how to properly clean house plants.)

We have loads of BG articles on the subject. Here’s are five popular pieces:

Happy gardening!

Jessie Keith

Black Gold Horticulturist

Infographic thanks to the Entomological Society of America

About JESSIE KEITH

Plants are the lens Jessie views the world through because they’re all-sustaining. (“They feed, clothe, house and heal us. They produce the air we breathe and even make us smell pretty.”) She’s a garden writer and photographer with degrees in both horticulture and plant biology from Purdue and Michigan State Universities. Her degrees were bolstered by internships at Longwood Gardens and the American Horticultural Society. She has since worked for many horticultural institutions and companies and now manages communications for Sun Gro Horticulture, the parent company of Black Gold. Her joy is sharing all things green and lovely with her two daughters.

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