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Hi, I’m Tony and this is my first blog post at MightyDigitalDownloads. I going to write about something that my family have been passionate about over generations – growing and eating fresh vegetables.

My grandfather had a vegetable garden that fed families for miles around over many years.  Much of what I know about growing vegetables comes from countless hours with him in his favorite place in the world – his veggie garden.

Grandpa was always at war with vegetable pests and generally won!  Before his time in many ways, he developed or adapted means of pest control that didn’t interfere with the eco balance of his garden and made sure that his veggies were healthy to eat and tasted good.

He would often say ‘If we could garden without any interference from the pests, gardening would be a simple matter’. But life in a vegetable garden is not so simple.  The most productive veggie gardeners watch out for these little creatures that can cause havoc if we don’t take effective measures for vegetable pest control in our garden.

In a healthy vegetable garden these pests need to be reduced or eliminated by strict garden cleanliness. Heaps of waste can become lodging places for the breeding of insect pests. Well cared for compost does not cause harm, but uncared waste can invite trouble.

There are a number of effective and natural ways to keep pests down in your vegetable garden. Earthworms constantly stir up the soil and this keeps soil open to air and water. Many of our common birds feed upon insects. Sparrows, robins, chickadees, meadow larks and orioles are all examples of birds which help in this way. Some insects feed on other and harmful insects. Some kinds of ladybugs do this good deed. The ichneumon-fly helps too.

Toads are wonderful sources of vegetable pest control because of the number of insects they can consume in one meal. The toad deserves very kind treatment from all of us. Every gardener should try to make his or her garden into a place attractive to both birds and toads. A good birdhouse, grain sprinkled about in early spring and a water-place, are invitations for birds to stay a while in your garden.

If you would like to ‘employ’ toads to keep your pest numbers down, fix things up for them too. During a hot summer day a toad likes to rest in the shade. By night he is ready to go forth to eat but not to kill, since toads prefer live food. How can you entice toads to stay? One thing is to prepare a retreat, quiet, dark and damp. A few stones of some size underneath the shade of a shrub with perhaps a carpeting of damp leaves are likely to attract toads.

Inviting toads and birds to linger in your veggie garden is an inexpensive way to provide effective and natural vegetable pest control there.

For more information about organic ways to control pests in your vegetable garden, read my article Eco -Friendly Vegetable Pest Control in Your Garden Part 2 on my website www.vegetablegardens4U

Warm regards

Antonio Fontanes

Antonio Fontanes is a well seasoned vegetable grower from a family of experienced gardeners. Want to learn more about how to keep your garden pest free and grow great veggies? Read my article Eco- Friendly Vegetable Pest Control in Your Garden Part 2 on my website vegetablegardens4U

Tags: vegetable gardens

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009 at 2:32 am and is filed under Home & Garden Improvements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.