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Maggots eating through your turnips and critters tearing through leaves can undo weeks or months of work seemingly overnight. Enlist the help of these five plants to aid you in the warzone of your garden.
Petunias
This plant repels mosquitoes, but it also helps keep away tomato hornworms, leafhoppers, squash bugs, asparagus beetles and aphids. Petunia flowers come in various colors to help mix and match with other flowers in your garden. You can grow them in the ground or in pots to move from one section to another as needed.
Thyme
This herb helps keep whiteflies, corn earworms, tomato hornworms and cabbage maggots and cabbage worms away. Cabbage maggots burrow into your root vegetables like turnips, swedes and radishes. Thyme also adds an aromatic smell to your garden and extra flavor to your meals.
Marigolds
These are classic plants to use to repel insects; however, they do not. Marigolds secrete nematicides to kill nematodes, tiny worms that eat plant roots. But, the benefit will be for the following year.
They attract ladybugs and hoverflies, whose larvae eat aphids just like ladybugs. They also attract parasitic wasps that lay eggs in whiteflies and caterpillars like tomato hornworms that larval wasps eat. Consider planting them among your plants or in pots that you can move around.
Peppermint
This plant produces a pungent scent and is well-known to keep away ants and mice. They also keep away mosquitos. Try using the leaves in salads or as part of a mint pesto.
Keep them in pots and move them where they’re needed. However, be careful because they can quickly run rampant when unchecked.
Chrysanthemums
Mums repel all kinds of garden pests like roaches, ants and the Japanese beetles that munch on your plants and fruits. They have the added benefit of repelling the fleas, ticks and bed bugs that bother humans. Plant them in your vegetable garden as companion plants to the ones you wish to protect or in bunches. Try not to pick too many of the flowers to brighten up your home.
Keep Pests Out of Your Garden
These plants help control pests, but even in sufficient numbers, they cannot protect against everything. Stay vigilant and apply countermeasures for those pests that slip through the defenses. Call or message us at Worldwide Pest Control and speak with our professionals. We know every garden is different, and we offer our expertise in dealing with your specific problems.