How to Avoid Pests in Square Foot Gardens

Square foot gardening enables you to get the maximum harvest from a grid system filled with custom-blended soil. Even if you're an expert gardener, you aren't exempt from the same pests that relish flowers and vegetables grown in conventional gardens. The efficient design of a square foot garden can help you to control pests early and often, before they take up residence in your tomato patch.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Geotextile weed mat
• Beer
• Floating row covers

1. Prepare the planting site before you construct your gardening grid system with a layer of geotextile weed mat. This fabric allows moisture to seep through, but excludes burrowing pests like moles and grubs.

2. Offer slugs and snails the beverage they crave. Set shallow dishes of stale beer around lettuce and cabbage plants. The yeast in the beer attracts the slimy gastropods, but the alcohol desiccates their delicate tissues.

3. Foil beetles and caterpillars with floating row covers. This finely spun cloth allows light and moisture to reach plants, but prevents pests from accessing your young vegetables.

4. Handpick the most conspicuous garden pests. The small size and accessibility of square foot gardens makes it easy for the gardener to notice large offenders like Colorado potato beetles and tomato hornworms, which you can drop in a bucket of soapy water.

5. Blast the tiniest pests off garden plants with a jet of water from the hose. This works well with spider mites and aphids.

6. Encourage beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps, ladybugs and preying mantises. Offer the bugs nectar-rich flowers such as sweet alyssum and marigolds to complement their diet of pests.