Organic Gardening and Worm Composting Pest Control

Having pests plague our beloved home gardens and red wiggler worms composts are inevitable. There will always come a time when you have to deal with these irritating pests before they do anymore harm to your garden and your worm composting bin. Using chemical pesticides is one of the most effective ways to protect your organic garden and settling peace and safety in your red worm composts and home gardens. But there are side effects to using these chemical pesticides – negative and harmful side effects.

A study conducted by the American Journal of Public Health concluded that children living in homes whose yards were treated with chemical herbicides and pesticides have the risk four times the possibility of incurring certain cancer-soft-tissue sarcoma! They also found out that fetuses exposed to home pest strips within their first three months of development have three times the regular rate of leukemia and that children exposed to the strips have twice the regular rate! These results are staggering!

Yes. It is important to keep your home garden and red worm composts safe from pests, but these numbers and statistics are even more so! You have to find a way to keep your home garden and red worm composts safe while making sure that you also keep your children and pets safe at home!

The most advisable thing to do is to not use pesticides or if you ever do, use them very sparingly. One alternative measure is to create a naturescape. What is a naturescape? It is a yard full of different plants and animal life which can immensely decrease the uninvited visits of unwanted pests. Furthermore it can also decrease your water consumption by 40% leaving you with a much higher quota for watering your home garden and keeping your red worm composts moist.

Some plants are also useful to deter those pesky pests. One such plant is the cucumber plant. Spreading some cucumber peels on the points where ants enter your house can be enough to stop them from ever coming back. Your red worms would be in grave danger if ever ants entered your red worm compost. During the event that they do enter your worm compost, they may use the chance to take the food sources that you provide for your red worms. This will render your red worms malnourished and unhealthy and this is not good if you are raising worms for compost.

You can also attract natural predators to protect your home garden and red worm composts. Some birds, bats and beneficial bugs should be able to do the trick! Providing food sources through feeders is a good idea as this will attract them to your garden. Trees like the red cedar and ever green are also good places for the birds to live in, thus attracting them even more. Finally, providing running water for them would be a great ‘cherry on the top.’

Using natural pest control for house plants is beneficial for your home garden and your composting worms. But it does not stop there; it is also beneficial to your health and the health and future of your children. So the next time you use that chemical pesticide to kill a single bug, you might want to think: are you endangering your life and your children’s lives by doing so?

Photocredits:

"caterppillar attack" © [net_efekt / Flickr]