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Pests
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| Katherine from the USA | You can kill slugs and snails with table salt. Go into the garden at dusk and look around plants, when you spot one of the "creatures" simply sprinkle them with your salt shaker. No harm to children, pets or the environment! |
| Jean from the UK | I spray mites with diluted washing up liquid and if you do this once a week it works. |
| Karen from the USA | Mites are "farmed" by ants so if you use ant powder at the base of the plant or shrub from early spring it will control mites. |
| Steph from the USA | If your tomatoes are getting blossom-end rot, which is when the blossoms or fruit begin to rot, you can use bone meal to give it a calcium supplement. The rot is caused when there is a differential in the water supply, such is a drought or periods of heavy rain. Make sure you keep the plants watered and give the plants extra calcium to prevent and restore them from blossom-end rot. |
| Shelly from the USA | The answer to the white spots on top of their azaelas and black spots on the bottom is lacebugs. I have the same problem. Spray them with a recommended lacebug killer and do it after a good water and do it at night. If it is done in the heat, the chemicals will burn them. |
| Alyce from the USA | The description "spider-like webs" sounds like some kind of spider mite. If that's true, and if it is possible, wipe or rub off as many leaves as possible. You can also use strong water pressure from you hose and apply a systemic. The little critters are too small to try and treat topically, and the webbing gives them some protection. The systemic will poison them whenever they take a bite of your plant. |
| Cherry from Australia | A home brew for roses: which seems to prevent attack from both fungi & insects: 10-litre bucket. Agitate a pure soap such as laundry cake soap to create good lather. Then mix in 7 tsps. of baking soda nd the appropriate quantity of pyrethrum concentrate, as per the pack instructions. This has proved to be effective against black spot, rust and powdery mildew as well as insect attacks from aphids, thrips, and caterpillars. Spray this brew every 3 months to keep bushes clean of problems. |
| Frances from the USA | "... a lawn which has died for no apparent reason. When we dug up some of the soil, there were many brown/tan coloured pupae and caterpillars. Could these be the cause of the grass dying? We now have a weedy soil area instead of a lawn." It sounds like
you have grubs 'yuk' we had the same experience. I heard it takes
a good 5 years to kill the grubs. Soon after my
husband had figured out what the problem was he was told to use
a lawn ferterlizer that had a weed/'bug' killer in it. The grass
did grow back fairly quickly but he fertlized the lawn quite often
for a few years...(following the directions on the bag). Check out
any nursery for further direction. Good luck, there is hope!. |
| Heidi from the USA | My advice to control boxelder bugs (not all the way but it helps a LOT!) mix a tablespoon of dishsoap (sunlight, dawn, etc.) with a gallon of water and spray it on them and the perimeter and up as far as you can reach of the house and trees etc. It really helps, and they die instantly. |
| Yourgarden.com's Specialist - Marian |
- Spruce-alburnum/mite: symptoms are, first the
needles turn into yellow and then brown after that they fall off.
The best way against those two diseases are to spray with a pesticide. Ask by a local garden store what they have of pesticide for your dwarf Alberta spruce. |
| Woolly Root Aphid Try a solution of soap-suds and spirit maybe it's not strong anough to get rid of the woolly aphids but you can try it first before using pesticides. Oak Gall Wasp Cynips quercusfolii also known as oak gall wasp. The gall wasp lays an egg in the leaf of an oak tree. That's what causes 'lumps' on the underside of the leaves of the oak trees. Normally if the oak tree is healthy they don't cause any harm. Earwigs Earwigs eat at night and hide during the day in dark paces such as under pots and containers. The earwigs make holes in flowerpetals and leaves. You can try them to catch in a newspaper or some thing like that. Place the newspaper, fold up or roll it up between the flowers and plants at night. When it become daylight the earwigs will hide between the newspaper sheets. If you can't get rid of them you can also buy a good insect spray, look on the container of that product if it is also against earwigs. Slugs 'Safe' way to get rid of slugs if you have children and pets are:
To get rid of slugs in your'e garden, pour a small amount of flat beer into small container, and place throughout garden. Slugs will crawl into container of beer and die, leaving you with a slug free garden. (Thanks to Mary Lynne from the USA) |
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Our Q&A section has become a very popular place to ask gardening questions but we would really like to receive some answers from you as well. If you think you have useful advice and tips, no matter how short, please send them to us at Yourgarden Q&A |
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