Pests can ruin your beautiful garden in an instant. After all the weeks and months of effort to cultivate, plant, and care for your garden, unwanted pests can wreak havoc in your garden.
Maintaining your garden is tough work, so here are simple solutions to relieve your gardening headaches. We’ll cover preventative care for your garden and ways to run pests out of town once they show up.
Preventative Care for Your Garden in Chicago
Chicago’s climate is a great place to grow various plants–and that’s why pests abound–squirrels, aphids, cabbage beetles…the list goes on and on. The best way to keep pests out of your garden is to take preventative measures during the planting season.
Gardening masters (and a quick Google search) will tell you to plant companion crops to reduce pests. Companion crops are pairings of plants that grow well together and reduce infestations in your garden.
|
Plant 1 |
Plant 2 |
Deters |
|
Tomato |
Basil |
Thrips and Hornworms |
|
Cucumber |
Radishes |
Cucumber Beetles |
|
Corn |
Beans / Squash |
Vine Borers, Deer, Raccoons |
|
Carrots |
Rosemary |
Carrot Flies |
|
Lettuce |
Garlic |
Aphids, Slugs, and Snails |
There are plenty of companion plant combinations, but these five are a great start to your garden. Outside of companion planting, consider garden flowers and wildflowers.
Garden flowers and wildflowers are amazing for your garden, too! Not only do they help pollinators and increase biodiversity in your garden, but they also prevent and reduce the pests in your garden. Chicago’s climate is friendly to many types of garden flowers and wildflowers. Here are some to help you get started:
- Nasturtium
- Tansy
- Marigold
- Tansy
- Lavender
- Basil
- Rosemary
- Catmint
- Asters
- Calendula
- Chrysanthemums
- Geraniums
- Petunias
Although companion plants and flowers are great preventative measures for pests in your garden, sometimes the pests persist and you need to take additional steps to get rid of them.
Reactive Pest Control for Your Garden in Chicago
Sometimes, no matter what you do, pests show up and ruin the party. You can do everything “right,” but you might still find slugs and beetles in your garden. What can you do? A lot, actually. But to temper expectations, remember that preventing pests is much easier than eradicating them once they’ve arrived.
Pests are challenging because you can’t just worry about the ones you see. You have to consider their eggs and larvae.
Here’s a wide variety of reactive pest control solutions for your garden. We recommend picking two or three to start and seeing how they work.
- Human-safe chemicals
- Non-toxic sprays (Captain Jack’s is a favorite)
- Food-grade diatomaceous earth (a great all-natural deterrent in your soil)
- Bird feeder (Feed the birds and they’ll soon find the bugs to eat)
- Bird bath (Keeps birds happy and protects tomatoes)
- Pepper water (3 hot peppers, 1 mild pepper, and 1 small onion, and a one-quart jar of water)
- Garden lime
- Catnip
- Vinegar (Mix equal parts of water and white vinegar in a spray bottle)
- Hot sauce (Refill an empty gallon to the top with water, add 10 oz of hot sauce and about a squirt of dish soap for adhesion)
Most of these mixtures require reapplication after 7-10 days to ensure you get rid of the pests. If you opt for the bird deterrent, make sure you keep the birds happy with bird food, a bath with clean water, and plenty of bugs to eat, otherwise they’ll wreak havoc on your garden by eating your juicy tomatoes and other delectable veggies.
How Will You Treat Your Garden?
Preventing pests in your garden is a year-round effort, but the harvest is worth it. Whether you’re in the planting stages of your garden or dealing with summertime pests, American Gardens is here to help your Chicagoland garden.
If you’re in need of garden rescue, look no further than American Gardens. We exclusively serve the Chicago area. We’ll bring time-tested solutions to your pesky problem.
