GARDEN MILLIPEDES AND PEST CONTROL – ORGANIC REMEDIES

admin — Sun, 01 Sep 2019 15:01:00 +0000

Today we will look into some natural or organic remedies to control or get rid off Greenhouse Millipedes or Garden Millipedes in your potting mix and elsewhere in your garden. We will also learn whether these are poisonous and also some chemical pesticides that can kill these pests in your home and garden.

The greenhouse millipede, also known as the hothouse millipede, short-flange millipede, or the garden millipede, is a common creepy pest in your garden that can cause severe damage to emergent vegetable seedlings and young plants.

How do I identify These Millipedes?

There are few types of these millipedes with hundreds of legs and can be white or brown or black in color. Unlike their cousin, the centipede, millipedes are not carnivores, instead they eat dead and rotting vegetation and they hide in moist places like your soil mulch layer, debris or inside the top layer of soil. They prefer darkness and moisture and hence they are more common in rainy season.

Are Millipedes Poisonous or Venomous?

Do not be too scared, Millipedes, unlike centipedes, are not venomous and are generally considered to be non-poisonous. However, there are some millipede species that release some fluids that can cause irritation to human skin. Hence its always better to wear garden gloves and employ safety precautions.

How do I kill or get rid off these garden pests?

There are many solutions to control millipedes. We will list out these one by one in 5 steps:

5. Visible Millipedes can be smashed or can be swept with a broom or a vacuum cleaner and can be disposed. But this is difficult because most of these are not visible and are found hiding under the soil or mulch layer.

4. Sticky Traps and Light Traps are another option that attract and trap these millipedes. But these are not available easily.

3. Chemical Pesticides: We will just name these pesticides because, we will not use any chemicals in our garden, specially vegetable gardening. The chemical pesticides that work are Propoxur, Cyfluthrin, Pyrethrins, Piperonyl butoxide, Deltamethrin, Cypermethrin, bifenthrin, etc.

2. Chicken and Cats: Before we proceed to our natural remedies, we will discuss on chicken. Chicken love to eat these type of insects and pests. Keeping a few hens can do wonders to get rid of these millipedes and even other pests in your garden.Cats, though they do not eat millipedes, they may chase them, play with them and smash them to some extent.

Natural and Organic Pesticides. The mechanism of action of any pesticide whether organic or inorganic chemical is Systemic effect which can be slow in action and Contact poisons which kill the pests when they come in contact with it.

Diatomaceous Earth is first in the list: This white powder is easily available at many garden stores and even online. Its completely harmless to people and pets.
Borax: Similar to Diatomacous Earth, Borax is derived from boric acid and dries the millipedes out and kills them. It also acts as a stomach poison that will kill millipedes if ingested. It’s completely safe to humans. Just sprinkle the boric acid over the areas of infestation and do not water it for atleast 24 hours. You can check out my detailed video and article on boric acid or borax powder for plants and garden.

Wood Ash: The action is similar to borax powder which dries out the soil and the pests. I also have a detailed video and article on the benefits of wood ash in gardening.

Top 7 Best Natural Pest Control Methods – Organic Pesticides

admin — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 04:21:59 +0000

In today’s Article, I shall be listing the best natural ways for your plant pest control needs and they are really very easy to implement and 100 percent safe and organic pest control methods. The last gardening hack will eliminate more than 80 percent pests in just one single shot, specially those resistant aphids, mealybugs, spider mites, whiteflies and many other bugs in your garden.

The main idea behind these methods is, this saves me a lot of time and Time is really precious!

Here s a list of few easy methods I use. These include natural pesticides and other simple methods.

1. Grow Plants Full of Health and Vigour: Yes, Regularly Adding organic composts like vermicompost, decomposed cowdung or horsedung on your top layer of soil is the best way to develop strong and vigorous plants which can resist or withstand these pest attacks. I also mix organic neem seed meal powder into the soil which combats many pathogens in the soil and also neem cake is a natural fertilizer with many micronutrients.

2. Keep Pest Repelling Plants in your garden. This is infact an easy way of keep many pests away including mosquitoes. You have to do this strategically – like placing these insect-repelling plants near entrances and also interspersed between your other plants which are more prone to pest attacks. There is a long list of such plants – I have listed out these names in these slides on the screen. This is taken from Wikipedia website. CHECK HERE.

3. Trimming or Pruning the Affected Leaves or branches. This step is really important because this has two benefits. This will reduce the load of pests to be eliminated by a pesticide and also offers the benefits of pruning a plant, that is giving out more branching.

4. Hand Pick and Eliminate. This is actually the best method to eliminate some worms and insects like caterpillars, slugs and snails and other leaf eating worms.

5. Neem Oil Spray: This is by far the most widely accepted natural pesticide spray worldwide. When you have lot of pests, spray your plants thoroughly once weekly or atleast once in 15 days. Then a maintenance or prophylactic dose of once a month if you have no pests in your garden. The Formula is Add 5 ml Pure Neem oil in 1 litre of water + some 10 drops of any liquid soap for the surfactant effect and to coat the leaves. Do a patch test on a leaf and then spray the whole garden. WATCH a Detailed Video HERE.

6. My Cocktail Organic Pest Spray: If your plant pest load is too high, consider using a mixture of multiple natural oils and other stuff to make a cocktail pesticide spray. I have discussed this recipe in detail in my video titled Universal Pesticide recipe. You can check this VIDEO HERE. What I used is a mixture of Clove Oil, Neem Oil and Optionally Eucalyptus Oil and then liquid soap. This is a really powerful organic pesticide solution. And again, Always do a patch test on a leaf to check the result before applying on entire plant.

7. And FINALLY, the Best method of pest control which can eliminate more than 80 percent of pests in 1 single shot. When we see these pests damaging our beloved plants, am sure we all feel like burning them to death. But we are helpless, we cannot burn our plants. You can only burn the cut out branches and leaves loaded with pests, which is infact the best way to prevent contamination to other plants. Incineration or burning is one of the best sterilization methods.

So, The only best way is to either kill them on the plants without damaging our plants or somehow dissociate them from our plants. Yes, This method is to separate these pests from our plants. I will demonstrate how powerful this is, so keep watching. Yes, Am talking about the high pressure water spray in misting mode using your garden spray gun with the correct pressure. I will reveal you everything now. How I experimented many methods to finally settle on this method and also the other benefits of this method. First of all there is absolutely no water pressure on your teres garden, because overhead tanks are sitting on the teres or slightly above it. I am sure all of you agree with me on this point. Most of us must be using the bottle spray to pump or spray pesticides which is a manual method to spray with very little pressure and with lot of effort and time and energy consuming specially if you have too many plants. To overcome this, First I started with the rechargeable battery operated 16 litre sprayer can. This was actually a good option with good pressure and other benefits like portability and things like that. But I wanted to connect my multi-mode spray gun with something like a multipurpose gadget where I can use my coiled hose with this multimode spray gun to do all tasks like water the plants and also spray pesticides and do all in one activity. And So, I connected my hose to this Double barrelled Self priming 12 v DC pump which is available online actually as a car wash pump. YOU CAN CHECK THIS POST to get all these products used here. I am not promoting this product. You can buy any similar pump and connect according to your plan and requirement and also please suggest more ideas in the comment box so that everyone is benefited.

As you can see, I am spraying this in pressure mist mode on this plant loaded with mealy bugs. See the pressure and with this pressure of fine misting, any pest will definitely dissociate from the plant, even including the underside of the leaves. After washing, you can then spray your regular pesticide.

For me, This is looking perfect so far, with the desired pressure and options to use it as a watering equipment , pest spraying, misting my plants and also misting or watering my seedlings and do a lot of stuff. It really saves me a lot of time.

So, there we have it folks, that was in brief on the best ways to control pests in your garden. Please give me a thumbs up If you liked this post. Also tweet or share the video with your gardener friends. Comment below with any query or any feedback regarding this.

Happy Gardening.

whiteflies – GKVKs – Gardening Tips and Store

GARDEN MILLIPEDES AND PEST CONTROL – ORGANIC REMEDIES

Top 7 Best Natural Pest Control Methods – Organic Pesticides