Keep Your Garden Healthy

You know the cliché… An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Clichés are popular because they use colorful language and contain some fundamental truth. In gardening, like many other activities (maintaining our health, for example), prevention is often the key. Acts of prevention now can save us time, money, and big problems later. Here are some prevention suggestions...

Insects in the Garden

Of course, we're referring to the "bad" insects. Insect problems can be prevented in several ways.

Ladybug Remove or Destroy Insect Habitats – Keep your garden "clean." Insects find habitat in decaying plant matter, where they find both food and shelter. Prevent areas of "standing water" where mosquitoes will live and breed. Mosquitoes won't do significant harm to your garden, but they'll attract other insects; and, they can make your gardening and outdoor entertaining miserable. Cover, or bury, food scraps in your compost.

Attract and Protect Beneficial Insects – Ladybugs (or lady beetles) and Praying Mantis –one of our favorites, of course - are two of the most popular beneficial insects. They are very useful in controlling other pests, most notably aphids. Bees are important as pollinators. You can attract beneficial insects by planting some specific plants, such as bee balm, fennel, and dill.

Use Only Natural, Selective Sprays – When insects appear in the garden, it's tempting to spray indiscriminately to wipe them all out. There are several good spray products that will control the bad bugs without killing the good ones. If you must spray, spray thoughtfully.

Weeds

All gardeners encounter weeds. There are two ways to prevent being overwhelmed by weeds:

Weed early, weed often
Mulch

» Learn More about controlling weeds in your garden.

Plant Diseases

There are two easy ways to prevent a lot of plant diseases:

Buy or grow disease resistant cultivars – There are a lot of hybrid tomato cultivars, for example, that have been bred for their disease resistance.

Use compost to amend your garden soil and to feed your flowers and vegetables – Adding compost to your gardens in the spring and fall and using compost as a natural fertilizer during the season will help your create better soil and resist a lot of common plant diseases.

Water Management

Few of us experience just the right amount of water for our lawns and gardens over the entire season. But, with a little preventative action, we can manage both extremes of water … whether it's drought or deluge.

Too Much Water – If your lawn or garden often, or occasionally, suffers from too much water, you might want to consider adding a rain garden to your landscape.

» Learn How to create a rain garden.

Too Little Water – To prevent the adverse affects of summer drought, the best action to take is to add a layer of mulch to your flower and vegetable gardens. Mulch will suppress weeds (which rob the gardens of both nutrients and water) and maintain a more constant level of soil moisture. Mulch always makes the garden look better, too. Grass clippings combined with shredded dry leaves makes an excellent organic mulch, which will also improve your soil over time.

Take Care of Your Tools

Routine preventative maintenance of your garden tools (just like maintenance for your car) will prevent costly repairs and frustrating down time later. Clean your tools after gardening; apply a light coating of oil to metal parts. If you are own a Mantis Tiller, you'll want to periodically check the air filter, inspect the spark plug and fuel strainer, and check the transmission grease level.
Visit the Maintenance Tips page for these and other helpful hints.