How to Control Major Garden Pests

Introduction

A creature that's nonexistent or harmless in one place can be a major nuisance in another. The following culprits, though, seem to cause big trouble everywhere. Here are some environment-friendly ways to reduce their damage.

Instructions

Rabbits

Steps

Step One

Get a ferret (a first-class rabbit-chaser) or beg some ferret droppings from a pet shop or ferret-owning friend, and scatter the droppings around your plants.

Step Two

Plant repellent species in and around the rabbits' targets. Good choices include Mexican marigolds, dusty miller, garlic and onions.

Step Three

Fill 1-gallon (4-l) glass bottles with water and set them among your plants. Sunlight bouncing off the glass will startle the bunnies and send them fleeing.

Step Four

Fill cloth pouches with cat, dog or human hair and scatter them among your plants.

Deer

Steps

Step One

Your only guaranteed protection is a solid fence that's at least 8 feet (2.5 m) high.

Step Two

To discourage deer, hang or spread any of these around the garden: human or dog hair, blood meal, baby powder, bars of deodorant soap, dirty laundry or shoes, evidence of natural predators (call a zoo and ask if they'll give you hair, urine or feces of a lion, tiger or cougar).

Step Three

Spray susceptible plants with a commercial product such as Hinder, an organic formula made from fatty acid soaps.

Step Four

Protect young trees by wrapping the trunks with hardware cloth or a plastic spiral tree protector (available at garden centers).

Step Five

Replace the deer's favorite food with plants they don't like. For a complete list, consult a book on deer control, but try any of these for starters: Annuals: snapdragon, sweet alyssum, stock, nasturtium, nicotiana, wax begonias, zinnia. Perennials: yarrow, monkshood, foxglove, lavender, coneflower, peonies, iris. Trees and shrubs: bottlebrush buckeye, shadblow, red osier dogwood, spruce, pine, northern red oak, rugosa rose, American holly, Sawara false cypress, Japanese pieris.

Step Six

Surround your garden with a triple-deep hedge of arborvitaes, which deer love. They'll flock to it and forgo your other plants.

Slugs

Steps

Step One

Water in the morning instead of evening; the soil will dry by nightfall, depriving the slugs of needed moisture when they come out to feed. Studies have shown this method to be as effective as classic trap-and-destroy techniques--reducing slug damage by up to 80 percent.

Step Two

Provide habitat for predators such as toads, birds, turtles and salamanders.

Step Three

Erect minifences of copper stripping around your planting beds. Just make sure you get all the slugs out of the area before you put up the fences; otherwise, you'll trap the pests inside.

Moles

Steps

Step One

Remove their food supply, grubs, by inoculating your lawn with milky spore disease (available at garden centers).

Step Two

Walk over the tunnels to flatten them; this often encourages the moles to go elsewhere.

Step Three

Find a tunnel that seems to be a main route and poke holes in it with a stick. Then pour in a castor oil-based repellent such as MoleMed. Or make your own by combining 1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) water, 3 fl oz (80 ml) castor oil and 4 tbsp. dishwashing liquid. Then add 2 tbsp. of this mixture to 1 gallon (4 l) water.

Cutworms

Steps

Step One

Mix moistened bran with molasses and BTK (Bacillus thuringiensis var. kurstaki ), available from garden centers and catalogs. Sprinkle the mixture over the soil about a week before you plant. You won't kill off all the cutworms this way, but you will reduce the population.

Step Two

Install a protective collar (1 inch/2.5 cm aboveground, 1 inch/2.5 cm below) around each seedling or transplant. Good collar makings include aluminum foil, paper-towel rolls and juice-concentrate cans.

Step Three

Encourage predators, especially toads and birds.

Step Four

Plant dill, alyssum, yarrow or cosmos to encourage parasitic wasps, which prey on cutworm larvae.

Groundhogs, aka woodchucks

Steps

Step One

Get a dog. Jack Russell terriers are famed groundhog hunters, but any canine, aka large or small, will send the rodents packing.

Step Two

Borrow the scent of someone else's dog: Give a friend's pooch some old towels or blanket scraps to lie on, then scatter them around the garden. Replace the bedding often to keep the aroma fresh and scary.

Step Three

Empty the contents of your cat's litter box into the tunnel entrance. You may need to repeat the process several times, but eventually the groundhog will get discouraged and move out. Then fill up the entrance and exit holes with rocks to keep out newcomers.

Step Four

Erect a welded-wire fence that extends 4 feet (120 cm) aboveground and 2 feet (60 cm) below. Bend the top foot (30 cm) of wire outward to form a baffle.

How to Choose a Lawn Type for Your Climate

Introduction

Maybe envy is green because it's what you feel when you see a great lawn and want it for your own. Get a great start on that walking carpet by knowing which kind of turf grass will grow best in your climate.

Instructions

Steps

Step One

Learn three facts about your climate. To choose a lawn grass, you need to know how cold it is in the winter, how much it rains (and when), and what kind of soil you have to work with.

Step Two

Evaluate how you'll use the lawn. Higher traffic - kids playing ball and dogs romping - demands different grass than more tranquil settings do.

Step Three

Choose a cool-season lawn grass if winter temperatures stay below 0 degrees F for more than a few days at a time. The popular fescue and bluegrass look worst at midsummer but do give you a bit of green all year long.

Step Four

Look for blended cool-season turf mixes in seeds and sods. Each component proves less demanding and less vulnerable to common pests of either single type.

Step Five

Pick a warm-season turf such as Bermuda grass, zoysia, St. Augustine and centipede where winters are relatively mild. Expect them to turn brown and go dormant with the first frost.

Step Six

Consider overseeding warm-season turfs with perennial ryegrass in fall for great green all winter. Mow them as needed and add the precious green cuttings to your compost heap.

Step Seven

Investigate native American grasses where conditions require a xeriscape approach to gardening that emphasizes water conservation. Don't expect a lush lawn, but use buffalo grass and other prairie species when available.

Tips & Warnings

• Look at lawns in your area to find one you'll like seeing for years - color and texture vary among cool- and warm-season grasses.
• Choose a fine-textured grass like Bermuda or bluegrass for high-traffic lawns.
• Limited budget? Use a true lawn grass in the front yard, but simply "mow what grows" in the back until you can finish the turf.

How to Buy a Gas-Powered Rotary Mower

Introduction

Sure, a push mower offers great exercise, but when it's 85 degrees out, your lawn is looking woolly, and you just want to get it done and over with, a self-propelled mower might make you a little happier.

Instructions

Steps

Step One

Use a self-propelled mower if your lawn is steep or falls into the half-acre range. Note that the least expensive mowers have one drive speed, which may be too fast for very thick lawns.

Step Two

Decide whether you want a bagging, side-discharge or mulching mower. Bags can be on the side or at the rear. Side-discharge means just as it says: The grass clippings are shot out the side and onto the lawn. Mulching mowers chop the grass clippings up and force them back into the lawn; this is a natural fertilizer and eliminates dealing with a bag of clippings.

Step Three

Look at grass-catcher bag capacity and how easy it is to remove and put on the bag. Remember that a full bag of clippings can be pretty heavy. Also find out how easy the bag is to empty.

Step Four

Consider that rear-bagging mowers cost more, but they take up less storage room and leave your lawn the cleanest.

Step Five

Consider these other features: electric start versus rope pull, operating controls, cutting-height adjustment (single control or wheel by wheel), blade disengagement, width of the cutting swath, choice of drive speeds, engine-kill safety system and length of warranty.

Step Six

Stick to an overhead-valve (OHV) engine, which is cleaner-burning.

Tips & Warnings

• Keep in mind that a model with rear-wheel drive will have great traction but may make it a little harder to make sharp turns.
• Some newer mowers offer leaf-handling capability. These suck up, shred and catch leaves with a screen that goes between the cutting blade and the discharge chute.
• Maintain your mower to keep it environmentally friendly - and to make it last longer.
• Never put your hands near the blades while operating a lawn mower.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon

A 16th century depiction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (by Martin Heemskerck). The Tower of Babel is visible in the background.

Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
• Great Pyramid of Giza • Hanging Gardens of Babylon • Statue of Zeus at Olympia • Temple of Artemis • Mausoleum of Maussollos • Colossus of Rhodes • Lighthouse of Alexandria

Gardens of Semiramis, 20th century interpretation

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (also known as Hanging Gardens of Semiramis) and the walls of Babylon (near present-day Baghdad in Iraq) were considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World. They were both supposedly built by Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BC. He is reported to have constructed the gardens to please his wife, Amyitis of Media, who longed for the trees and beautiful plants of her homeland. The lush Hanging Gardens are extensively documented by Greek historians such as Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, but otherwise there is little evidence for their existence. In fact, there are no Babylonian records of any such gardens having existed. Some circumstantial evidence gathered at the excavation of the palace at Babylon has accrued, but does not completely substantiate what look like fanciful descriptions. Through the ages, the location may have been confused with gardens that existed at Nineveh, since tablets from there clearly show gardens. Writings on these tablets describe the possible use of something similar to an Archimedes' screw as a process of raising the water to the required height.

Hanging Garden, Assyrian interpretation

A hanging garden, 21st century interpretation

Garden pests

• A garden pest is what one considers a pest. The beautiful Tropaeolum speciosum can be considered a pest if it seeds and starts to grow where it is not wanted. As the root is well below ground, pulling it up does not remove it: it simply grows again and becomes what may be considered a pest.
• In lawns, moss can become dominant and be impossible to eradicate. In some lawns, lichens, especially very damp lawn lichens such as Peltigera lactucfolia and P. membranacea, can become difficult and be considered pests.

Gardens as art

Garden design is considered to be an art in most cultures, distinguished from gardening, which generally means garden maintenance. In Japan, for instance, Samurai and Zen monks were often required to build decorative gardens or practice related skills like flower arrangement known as ikebana. In 18th century Europe, country estates were refashioned by landscape gardeners into formal gardens or landscaped parklands, such as at Versailles, France or Stowe, England. Today, landscape architects and garden designers continue to produce artistically creative designs for private garden spaces.

Gardening

A gardener

Gardening is the practice of growing flowering plants, vegetables, and fruits. Residential gardening most often takes place in or about a residence, in a space referred to as the garden. Although a garden typically is located on the land near a residence, it may also be located in a roof, in an atrium, on a balcony, in a windowbox, or on a patio or vivarium.

Gardening also takes place in non-residential green areas, such as parks, public or semi-public gardens (botanical gardens or zoological gardens), amusement and theme parks, along transportation corridors, and around tourist attractions and hotels. In these situations, a staff of gardeners or groundskeepers maintains the gardens.

Indoor gardening is concerned with the growing of houseplants within a residence or building, in a conservatory, or in a greenhouse. Indoor gardens are sometimes incorporated as part of air conditioning or heating systems.

Water gardening is concerned with growing plants adapted to pools and ponds. Bog gardens are also considered a type of water garden. These all require special conditions and considerations. A simple water garden may consist solely of a tub containing the water and plant(s).

Container gardening is concerned with growing plants in any type of container either indoors or outdoors. Common containers are pots, hanging baskets, and planters. Container gardening is usually used in atriums and on balconies, patios, and roof tops.