Prevention is key

• Crop rotation prevents many, many problems.


• Companion planting. Planting marigolds in with your squash, cucumbers and pumpkins can keep away certain pests. And in my experience, a row of dill seems to attract ladybugs.


• Diversity is better than monoculture, even within the same type of plant. For instance, plant three varieties of potato instead of just one, so that if you get a blight or fungus, one or two of your varieties will probably be resistant.

Getting rid of big, visible bugs

• Hand-picking sounds tedious, but for large insects on a few favorite plants, it works really well. I have a friend that pays his young sons 5 cents for each live squash bug they can harvest off the pumpkin plant. Sounds like a good investment to me, and a fun kind of family competition in the garden! Well-practiced hand picking can devastate the populations of caterpillars on broccoli or cabbage in just a few minutes. It works, and you'll feel awfully clever once you learn where the bugs like to hide on the plant.

Slugs, the bane of many a garden

• It sounds bizarre, but if you leave (well cleaned) tunafish can, filled halfway with beer, in the garden overnight you'll often find it filled with dead slugs in the morning. Gross, but effective.
  
• Crushed eggshells or hair (human, dog, or cat) can stop slugs in their tracks. Spread either in a band around plant bases.


• Find and kill slugs when hand-picking other pests: A spray bottle with one part ammonia to two parts tap water will do the job. It's organic, but you still might be careful spraying around the leaves of tender plants.

Aphids, mites, and other little suckers

• A mixture of dish soap and water, sprayed onto affected plants, will kill aphids. Make sure to water the plants really well an hour or two ahead of time, to minimize the chance that the plant will suck up the soapy water that could potentially damage roots. Pick a soap that is phosphorus-free if possible.

Miscellaneous pests

• Spraying neem oil mixes onto your plants can kill a variety of pests. You can learn more here.


• Hot pepper waxes are a mix of capsaicin (an extract of cayenne pepper) and a waxy substance (like paraffin). Proponents of hot pepper wax say it is effective against aphids, spider mites, whiteflies, cabbage loopers and beet armyworms. I've never used it, but I certainly would give it a try if my garden was inundated with these types of pests and I couldn't use another (free) method like soapy water or hand picking.

Fungi, blight, and other mysterious problems

• One year, when I planted four varieties of tomato, I had two of those varieties succumb to a mysterious fruit-rotting problem, while the other two plants got off scot-free. Like I mentioned above, biodiversity can be the key here. Within reason, it is a good idea to hedge your bets with a couple varieties of a given type of plant - some will likely be resistant to whatever strikes your garden. Besides, it is fun to have different shapes, colors, or sizes of whatever you grow.


• Water in the early morning. This cuts down on fungus, blights, slugs, and even sometimes caterpillars. All these things like damp nights - so if you have dry plants at night, you'll see fewer pests. Watering in the early morning also saves water, which is great.