Natural pest deterrents

After all the time and effort taken to create your wonderful garden, it can be disheartening when pests such as slugs, snails and aphids come along and destroy all your hard work. You may be tempted to reach for the biggest bottle of pesticide straight away, and although pesticides are very useful, did you know there are more natural measures you can take to control pests in your garden?

We have taken the liberty of explaining a few ideas below for you.

• Achieving a Natural Balance: Allowing and encouraging natural predators like ladybirds, lacewings, frogs, hedgehogs and birds into your garden, can actually help to control the number of pests attacking your plants. Why not trying to cope with a few pests and see if you can encourage these natural predators to do their job?
• Hand picking: Although it can be time consuming, removing pests by hand is worth doing and really beneficial to the rest of plants around it.
• Companion planting: Put plants that attract predatory insects close to those that don’t, this will protect the more vulnerable plants against pests.
• Organic Pesticides: These are a great alternative from harsh chemicals and can be found right here in Pugh’s.
• Deterrents or Barriers: Many garden pests are sensitive to certain things, like slugs. Slugs don’t like copper pipe or the sharp edges on eggshells, many things like these can prevent pests from attacking your plants. We have a lot of these natural methods available form our Garden Centres, too!
• Use pesticides as a last resort: If absolutely necessary to use a pesticide, then we recommend using them in the evenings. This is because creatures like bees are less active at this time of day so reduces the risk of harm. We also recommend washing off any dead insects/pests the next day to prevent harm to any birds in your garden. And remember ALWAYS FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS on the packaging to ensure safe use and minimal environmental impact.