pesticides – Eco Home Ideas

Green Pest Control For Your Garden

We all know that traditional pesticides are incredibly harmful for the environment and best avoided by everyone. However, when your beautiful garden is being ravaged by insects and other pests, those horrible chemicals almost start to look appealing again. Don’t worry, here are some tips for ultra-green pest control.

Ants

Nothing worse than ants chewing away at your precious plants. Find some cedar oil and spray it around the problem area, as it is a non-toxic insect repellent that can get rid of ants as well as mosquitoes, fleas and even cockroaches. Another way to get rid of ants is to use bitter cucumber peels, ground coffee or garlic cloves. Spread them around among your plants as many ants have aversion to those items. You can also plant mint in your garden and most ant species will leave the rest of your plants alone. Finally, diatomaceous earth (a soft siliceous type of soil) will repel ants and most other insects.

Slugs and snails

Slimy, slow, disgusting and incredibly destructive, snails and slugs can completely ruin your plants in one night. Place a couple of shallow dishes with beer among the plants that you want to protect. Slugs really love beer so they will go straight to the plate, fall down and drown. Crushed eggshells sprinkled among the plants are another great way to dissuade these slimy pests. Snails and slugs try not to cross a hard sharp barrier that will damage their soft bodies.

Other bugs

One of the best (and greenest) ways to get rid of bugs is to introduce their natural predators, as long as you do your research. Find out the best beneficial insects that will eat the pests without damaging your plants and buy them on eBay. You can also attract birds to your garden as they will not only fill your house with music, but they will also eat bugs. Get a bird bath and keep it filled with fresh water, hang bird feeders and houses, try to keep a quiet environment and don’t disturb the birds. They will do the dirty work for you.

Mammals and other animals

There are solar powered pest control products that collect energy from the sunlight and shake periodically. These products work by producing vibrations that disturb small animals and scare them away. If you want to avoid racoons and skunks, make sure your garbage cans are tightly closed with a well-fitting lid. If you are really having a problem with animals, you can try no-kill traps to deal with them in a humane way. Do your research and safely release the animals back into the wild, far away from your garden. If you are using glue traps for snakes, vegetable oil is a safe way to loosen the glue without hurting the animal.

Clean Food: Produce Free of Pesticides

Not all of us can afford organic produce. Sure, it’s healthy, clean and a better choice over mass-farmed vegetables, but it’s also more expensive. And as much as we’d love to eat exclusively locally sourced, ethically farmed, organic produce straight from the farmers’ market, sometimes Walmart’s produce section will have to do. Luckily, we can still avoid pesticides by choosing the right ingredients.

The Environmental Working Group releases a report every year on the state of organic produce and food in America. The paper examines the pesticide content in more than 48 food items, both locally produced and imported. But even if the report goes well into detail, people usually just pay attention to its two master lists. The “Dirty Dozen”, that recounts the twelve more contaminated products, and the “Clean Fifteen”, with the fifteen items with less pesticides. These lists are a great guide to eat healthy on a budget. If you can’t afford to buy all your produce organic, you are better off splurging on the products that normally carry more pesticide content.

The Dirty Dozen

Let’s start with the vegetables you want to avoid unless you know their source. The EWG found traces of pesticides in two thirds of all produce, but who are the worst offenders? Apples. Innocent, delicious apples tested positive for agrochemicals in 99% of the samples. They were closely followed by 98% of peaches and 97% of nectarines. Samples of grapes and bell peppers showed traces of 15 different pesticides each, while potatoes had more pesticides by weight than any other vegetable. The list is completed by strawberries, celery, spinach, cherry tomatoes, imported snap peas and cucumbers.

While not in the traditional dirty dozen list, the EWG found several leafy greens like kale and hot peppers tested positive for extremely harmful insecticides. They do not have a high enough concentration of pesticides to be on the list, but the toxicity of the chemicals pushed the EWG to recommend buying organic as well.

The Clean Fifteen

On the flip-side, avocados proved to be the cleanest product, showing detectable pesticides in only 1% of the samples. More clean produce includes 89% of pineapples, 88% of mango 82% of kiwi, 80% of papayas and 61% of cantaloupe, that showed no residues of agrochemicals. If you want to stock up your pantry, you should also look for sweet corn, cabbage, frozen sweet peas, asparagus, onions, grapefruit, cauliflower, sweet potatoes and eggplant.

If you want to eat cleaner and healthier every day, your grocery shopping has to change. Try to buy your produce from different sources, which will limit your exposure to a single pesticide. Besides, if you try to buy seasonal veggies from local markets, you are guaranteed to get fresher produce with less chemicals. Once you get home, remember to always wash your fruits and veggies thoroughly and, if you are not buying organic leafy greens, it is best to cook them for consumption.