How I Reduced 98% of Pest Problems in My Garden

Hello and welcome to Lively Garden. My name is Viviane and this is where we encourage you to grow your own food and not just grow it but grow it organically. And we also show you that it's possible to grow food in your small piece of land. You don't need acres to grow food. You can still grow food in your small piece of land. You can still grow food in containers. You will get the acres one day. God will give us that. But before that we have to be faithful in this little that we have. And today's video we are going to talk about pest because most of you mentioned in the comment section that I shall tell you how I deal with pest in my garden and that's what I want us to talk about. So one of the ways in which you can get rid of pest or control pests in your garden is to avoid monocropping. Monocropping is where you plant one type of vegetable in your garden. For example in this bed I could just decide to plant kales or just cabbages. But instead of monocropping I usually advise for people to do companion planting or intensive planting. This is why you plant different types of crops together. For example if you look at this bed you'll see a tomato, you'll see dill, you'll see spinach, you'll see a variety of crops on this one bed. And I will tell you the disadvantage of monocropping. For example if I had planted just kales or just cabbages on this bed what happens is plants usually release a scent into the atmosphere. So if I've planted cabbages here and they release a scent into the atmosphere then a pest like a cabbage moth is able to smell that scent and know there are cabbages somewhere. And then what it does it traces that scent until it lands on the cabbage. It is the same way when you're visiting your friend and they send you a google location and then you follow the google map until you reach their home. So that is the same way pests do until they locate the crop they want. Now what happens to you if the cabbage moth finally lands on your garden and your whole garden has cabbages? It will devour your cabbage, it will lay eggs, it will call the friends and the neighbors and they will feed and destroy everything. And also warn to you if you're not the kind of person who does scouting like you don't go around checking if there are new pests and things like that. So if you're the kind of person that stays for three four days before you go to your garden then by the time you're going everything is done, everything is eaten, everything is destroyed. But look at it this way if the same person had planted a number of crops on their bed like I have done even if the cabbage moth comes let's just say it happens to land on the cabbage although it is very hard but let's just say it happens to land on my cabbage it will only have one cabbage to eat there is nothing else for it to eat because it cannot eat a tomato it cannot eat an onion it will not eat my spinach it cannot eat the dill. So what happens the cabbage moth will just disappear. So my damage if there is damage is just one cabbage as opposed to somebody who had a whole land of cabbages my loss will just be one and somebody else's loss will be like 50 or 100 cabbages. So planting many different types or different varieties of crops usually helps one to reduce the damage and also it also confuses the pest because of the many scents that are that are being sent into the atmosphere even if the cabbage moth comes it can't really tell where the cabbage is because there's spinach it has a scent there's dill it has a scent like there's so much happening so that is one of the ways in which you help to control or get rid of pest in your garden avoid planting just one type of vegetable or just one type of crop instead plant multiples companion plant plant different types of vegetables together. The next thing I want you to do is to plant herbs at the edges of your garden if you have birds like me you can plant herbs at the edges of your beds even if you're planting on ground you can still plant herbs at the edges of your garden. So I'll show you around you can see I have herbs at the edges I have herbs I have oregano I have thyme I have dill I have lavender. Now what herbs at the edges of the garden do is that they help to deter pests they act like bouncers because when pests are coming into your garden they don't just jump right into the middle most times they start with the edges they start with the edges as they go into the middle of the garden so if they find bouncers here at the edges then they will not be able to enter your garden and pests usually have such a strong scent so that scent will deter or confuse the pest. Remember when we started I say that crops do release a certain scent into the atmosphere and that is what pests use to locate the certain crop now imagine a pest has located the the scent of a certain crop but just before it gets to eat it starts to realize there are a number of certain scents it can smell rosemary it can smell thyme it can smell lavender so what happens to the pest it gets so confused it can't locate the cabbage because there are so many scents coming and that is why you need the herbs they will act as bouncers they will they will release their strong scents into the atmosphere and they will confuse the pest so I know most people love to do a herb garden it's cute but I don't think it's functional I see people just doing a herb garden and planting just herbs in one corner or just herbs in one garden like I said it's cute but it's not functional remove those herbs from the herb garden and come and mix them with your vegetables that is where you will get utmost protection of your vegetables. We've talked about interplanting or companion planting as one of the ways to get rid of pests we've also talked about planting herbs together with your vegetables or planting herbs at the edges of your garden the third thing I want you to do is to plant flowers plant flowers also at the edges of your garden these are marigolds and you can also plant things like zinnias you can plant dahlias if you're planting flowers maybe you can try and plant the short ones you don't want the very big ones to cover your garden so look for the short or the dwarf varieties like the marigolds for example you can do the french marigold instead of other tall and big marigolds now what do flowers do for the garden in terms of protection from pests now flowers do attract the good pests not everything in the garden is bad I want us to know that they're not every pest you see in the garden you have to kill or destroy not everything is bad some pests are good some pests feed on the bad pests a thing like ladybug or ladybug for example it feeds on aphids and one ladybug can feed up to 300 aphids a day just one ladybug and the larvae of a ladybug can feed up to almost 600 aphids in a day so imagine if you have a number of ladybugs in your garden you will never have to deal with aphids because the ladybug which is a good pest will feed on the aphids which in this case is a bad pest things like praying mantis those are good pests in your garden so don't kill those ones we have like the hoover flies the laceweeds those are good pests in your garden and most of them will not they need flowers and things like bees these are pollinators 75% of the crops we plant they need bees for pollination things like our zucchinis or cucumbers if they're not pollinated they'll just fall and we won't have a production we won't have a harvest so I want you to plant flowers in your garden one they make the garden beautiful and also they attract the good pest they attract the good pollinators and also some of these also flowers they also do their job of deterring pests because some of them also have that strong scent like the marigold so it will also help to deter the bad pest and also the French marigold also helps to fight the bad nematodes in the soil so it is not also helping above here it is also working down there so plant flowers in your garden they are beautiful and they also do the job of controlling pests so we've talked about interplanting or companion planting we've talked about planting herbs at the edges of your garden and we've also talked about introducing flowers in your garden another thing you can do to get rid of pests in your garden is planting trap crops now trap crops are crops that the pests will be more likely to eat other than eating the other crops in your garden let me give you an example so that it doesn't sound like I'm rambling radish radish are used as a trap crop for us Africans we really don't eat a lot of radish so we don't care for radish that much so what you do you plant things like radish at the edges of so when a pest comes it is more likely to eat the radish other than the cabbage so it will eat the radish then leave your cabbage and that is a win for you because you don't really care for the radish what is most important to you is the cabbage so you can plant trap crops another crop that I know is used as a trap crop is a flower it's called nastashium so plants pests love to feed on nastashiums a lot so if you have a nastashium at the edges of your of your garden instead of a pest going to eat your kale or your broccoli it will just go and feed on the nastashium so we've talked about companion planting or interplanting we've also talked about planting herbs at the edges of your garden we've also talked about planting flowers we've also talked about planting trap crops and then something else I didn't mention um onions mix onions also in the midst of other vegetables don't just plant onions alone if you look at my garden every bed has at least three or four onions somewhere mixed up in the middle of the garden so that is also something else that you should consider but now if the pests are so many and they've already invaded your garden then now you can start looking into organic pest control methods and I think I've done some videos I'll try and link them there are things like you can use I know something like pepper like cayenne pepper so if you have the the chili flakes or the grinded chili pepper you you boil water you first boil the water and then you put the powder and then you let it steep and then you filter it and then that water you can spray it under the leaves but you're also told to do that early in the morning or late in the evening so that you don't burn the leaves other methods include onion water and garlic water you can also cut onions or onions and garlic and put them in water and then you filter and then you spray that so those are and I'm sure there are so many others I've done several videos I'll link them so those are some of the things that you can do when you already have the pest and you don't want to go the synthetic way buying pesticide we are trying to avoid that at all means uh so yeah although with organic pesticides one thing is they need patience they won't work like the ones from the aggregate or the ones from the shop they are a bit slow it's an organic process it's a slow process so they are a bit slow but they do work so you have to be a real patient with that so we've talked about companion planting we've talked about planting herbs on the edges of the garden we've talked about planting flowers we've talked about planting trap crops we've talked about introducing the onion family the onions and the garlic we've talked about organic pesticides that you can make at home another thing that I had forgotten and I should mention is scouting scouting is also very important when you have a garden so scouting is you going around your garden and checking undersides of leaves if there are any pests that really does help with self-elimination of the pest because if you see a pest you're able to just destroy it so if you have a garden try to scout and I know I understand most people maybe don't live next to their farms or next to their garden but if you have a farm hand you can tell them to always go around in the garden because when you do that just to me every time I go around the garden that's when I'm able to spot a caterpillar or a moth that's when I'm able to spot those first before they start laying eggs and multiplying so that one is also a very good habit that you can introduce then another important thing in every every garden is soil and I will do a detailed video about soil because the state of the soil globally is depressing because of soil degradation our soils are not suitable for farming anymore we have destroyed our soils with the farming practices and so many other things that I think I will I shall talk about in my next video but I want you to know that soil is the most important thing in any garden in any farm anywhere that you're trying to grow vegetation soil plays such a huge role and if your soil is healthy I can guarantee you the plant that comes out of it will be very healthy and a healthy plant is able to deal with pest and I don't want to get into the science of it right now but I still will do a video about that so soil is very important so let me know if you want me to give you a detailed video about the soil and microbial life and what happens under the soil and how you should take care of your soil to avoid soil degradation how you should replenish your soil generally how you should take care of your soil yeah so that's something that we can talk about in the next video just let me know if that is something you'd be interested in once again thank you so much for your continued support I love reading your comments so continue writing to me I love reading and responding to you thank you so much for the love let's continue growing the channel let me know if this was helpful and make sure to subscribe and to like the video and share with another gardener or somebody who might benefit from this see you