by Briar Miller

Created on: February 12, 2010   Last Updated: February 10, 2011

Organic pest control rests first and foremost on growing strong and healthy plants, which means plenty of (my favorite hobby-horse) compost. If your soil is healthy, your plants will be healthy. If your plants are healthy they will stand up to pests much better than otherwise.  

I've seen brassicas almost completely stripped down to the veins by pigeons, come back and produce a good crop, because the soil was healthy. Having said that, in the real world, the pests wll make pretty fair inroads and reduce your crop it you don't take measures to deal with them.

The first problem your vegetables will come up again are pesky seed-eating creatures. Mice, birds, various insects. The only sure-fire way of avoiding this is to sow indoors and plant out later.  

Some people swear by soaking their peas in paraffin as a deterrent, but I have not found this to actually work. Netting can keep off surface creatures, but nothing will keep off mice, except maybe a cat.

So your seeds have managed to germinate, tentatively sending up their first green shoots. Only for their roots to be nibbled off completely by leather jackets. Or to be chomped off at ground level by slugs. One approach is to sow indoors and to plant out strong healthy, well hardened off plants, into healthy soil.  

If you really are infested with pests in and on the soil, the only really good organic remedy is to leave the ground bare through the winter and turn it over now and then. If you also have a bird feeder, your feathered friends will oblige you in decimating the soil pest population.

Slugs are a big problem. There are various folk remedies, such as beer traps and egg shell, but they never are quite satisfactory. One thing I have found which does work, is covering the soil with clear polythene for a season, thereby completely drying it out.  

This kills all the slugs or chivvies them away somewhere else. If you can give regular applications of wood ashes around your plants, this puts the slugs off approaching.

Now we have healthy young plants, growing on vigorously. They have survived and overcome the attentions of the slug and have a slightly smug air about them. At this point you might wake up one morning and wish that you had bothered to put up a fence around your patch. And if you did, you will probably wish you had dug it in deeper.  

This is the only way to keep out larger pests: Rabbits, deer, pheasants. You need to make it high enough and deep enough to keep out whichever

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