Natural pest control is quite cheap and almost free to initiate in your garden. Its especially helpful in wet or rainy weather due to the fact that pesticides get easily washed away by the rains which translates into a loss as one has to spray more frequently. One garden toad in the garden is able to consume hundreds of insects daily. Do you use these methods?
We have been considering installing a Martin house in our yard - to attract purple martins for mosquito control. I used to work at a summer camp where we installed several bat houses in trees in the woods to help control the mosquitos. I'm not sure how much it helped but in the woods, bat houses are a little safer than in my backyard. When researching "natural mosquito control" I came across purple martin houses. I think they are terribly ugly, but if they got rid of all my mosquitos without having to pay for any upkeep, I'd be willing to try. Plus, they are lovely birds and anything that encourages a healthy ecosystem is a win in my book.
Yes, I purposely don't put pesticides on my plants because I don't want the praying mantis and ladybugs. I find that most problems resolve themselves quickly when you don't interfere with nature. I also have a cat that scares off most of the crows and mice from my garden.
As per the biology class in grade school, frogs and toads are good pest control particularly for flying insects like bugs and flies and also mosquitoes. However, we have 3 dogs that use the yard for their toilet where frogs and toads inhabit. We have to catch those critters for we were warned by the vet that dogs can be poisoned when it attacks the toad which releases toxins on its skin. We love our dogs and we cannot take that risk so out with the frogs and toads. But we upon catching, we place those frogs in the vacant lot beside our home where they can eat lots of insect. Our natural pest control is the lemon grass which turns off mosquitoes and flies with its minty scent.
Yes, I agree that having a lot of frogs in your place is a good thing to control pests naturally. But I would not do that because frogs can easily attract snakes. They can sense frogs from very far away. In our area vegetables mostly affected by pests are brinjal, okra, peas and green chilly. My kitchen garden is surrounded by a net which protects our plants from pest attacks. But sometimes they manage to come inside and then I have to eliminate them using organic methods like spraying neem oil, garlic chilly juice etc. There is a visible improvement in reduction of pests in our kitchen garden. I also installed drip irrigation in that place so I don’t have to open the net quite often. On hot climates I can also give a partial shade to our garden using the net.
