Using commercial pesticides in your garden may be useful for getting rid of pests – although they don’t always work properly and most need to be reapplied regularly.

But commercial pesticides can have various disadvantages to them:

• they are often toxic so need to be stored and used away from children and pets
• they can contaminate the soil
• they can be washed into our water systems – killing organisms in those systems and resulting in polluted creeks rivers and oceans
• it took a lot of energy and resources to make and package and transport the pesticide to your garden

So what are the alternatives?

• leave the bugs alone – not all of them are harmful to the plants anyway
• try companion planting – various plants and herbs are natural repellents
• use organic pesticides – we’ll add some recipes to this blog in coming weeks
• manually remove the bugs – time consuming but leaves no residue and gets you out in the garden for some fresh air!