10 Easy Ways to Keep Pests Off Your Fruit and Vegetables This Year Without Using Chemicals

I’ve been plagued by moles this year, and my poor veggie garden has suffered because of it. They have dug up everything in sight, and the only thing to have survived them is my tomatoes. 

I realize moles aren’t the usual pests, but blimey, are they ever annoying. Of course, I don’t want to hurt them, but it’s soul-destroying to see all your hard work go to waste in one night of a mole having a field day in your garden.

And moles aren’t the only thing out there leaving you wringing your hands in despair as you see your fruit and veg ruined. So what can you do about it? How do you get rid of them without using harmful pesticides and chemicals?

10 Ways To Get Rid of Pests in Your Garden

Half the battle is a healthy plot to begin with. A strong plant shrugs off trouble that would finish a weak one. So nail a few golden rules of gardening first, then layer these ten tricks on top. Pick the ones that suit your garden and run with them.

1. Invite the Good Guys In

Your best pest patrol works for free and never calls in sick. Ladybugs, lacewings and hoverflies hoover up aphids by the hundred. Birds work their way through caterpillars and slugs, and frogs, toads and hedgehogs take the night shift.

Give them a reason to move in. A little water, a log pile, a patch left a bit wild. Turn a corner of your plot into a pollinator patch, and you’ll pull in the good bugs, along with the birds that eat the bad ones.

Once they settle, they do the job you’d otherwise be doing on your hands and knees. Let them.

2. Plant Companions the Pests Can’t Stand

Some plants earn their place by guarding the ones next door. Marigolds are the classic, dotted among tomatoes and beans to put off all sorts. 

Garlic, chives and onions throw pests off the scent, quite literally. Aromatic herbs like basil, mint and rosemary do much the same.

Then there’s the trap crop trick. Nasturtiums pull aphids and caterpillars away from your veg and take the hit for them. You lose the nasturtiums and save the beans.

Aphids often arrive with ants that farm them for their sweet honeydew, so it’s worth dealing with the ants too, without wrecking your soil.

3. Put Up Barriers and Netting

Sometimes the simplest fix is a physical wall between pest and plant. Fine insect mesh laid over hoops keeps out cabbage whites and carrot fly while still letting in sun and rain. 

Bird netting saves your soft fruit. Little drawstring bags slipped over tomato trusses or grape bunches stop birds and bugs having a nibble.

For slugs, a copper ring around a precious plant gives them a small shock they won’t cross.

A cloche over young seedlings buys them time until they’re tough enough to fend for themselves.

4. Pick Them Off by Hand

Not the most fun, but it works, nonetheless. On a warm evening, wander out with a bucket of soapy water and pick off the big offenders. Tomato hornworms, cabbage caterpillars, slugs, snails, beetles. Straight in the bucket.

For aphids, a firm blast from the hose knocks them clean off, and most never find their way back.

Do it two or three evenings running, and you’ll break the back of an infestation. And there is something rather satisfying about the whole thing. A bit like swatting an annoying fly.

5. Set a Few Simple Traps

A slug pub is the old faithful. Sink a shallow tub of cheap beer into the soil overnight, and the slugs pile in and can’t climb out. Not a pretty sight in the morning, but it does the trick.

A damp plank, an upturned grapefruit half or a bit of soggy cardboard works the same way. The slugs and earwigs shelter under it, and you tip them out come morning.

One word of warning. If you’ve got a dog nosing about like my collie does, keep beer traps and anything else well out of reach and lean toward a pet-safe garden wherever you can.

6. Keep Things Clean and Tidy

Pests love a mess. Piles of old leaves, rotting fruit and plant debris are where they hide and breed over winter. Clear it out, especially in autumn, and you take away their hideouts.

Don’t waste the good stuff, mind. Healthy trimmings can go on the compost heap, even if all you have is a balcony. Just keep anything diseased well out of it.

A tidy plot gives pests nowhere to settle. It really is that simple.

7. Move Your Crops Around Each Year

Grow the same thing in the same spot year after year, and the pests that love it know exactly where to find it. They overwinter in the soil and wake up to breakfast in bed.

Move your crops around each season, and you break the cycle. Tomatoes here this year, beans there, and swap them over again next year.

It’s an old allotment trick, and it costs you nothing but a bit of planning.

8. Whip Up Your Own Sprays

You can make a decent bug spray from what’s already in the kitchen. A teaspoon of mild dish soap in a pint of water, shaken up and misted onto aphids, thrips, and mites, clogs them up and clears them off. Test it on a leaf or two first.

A garlic or chili spray sends a lot of chewing insects packing. It’s the same idea I use for seeing off summer flies when we’re trying to eat outside.

Spray in the cool of early morning or evening, never in hot sun, or you’ll scorch the leaves.

9. Keep a Few Gentle Extras on Hand

For stubborn cases, a handful of gentle helpers earn their keep. Diatomaceous earth sprinkled around plants deals with soft-bodied crawlers. Neem oil is a useful all-rounder for aphids and mites. Copper tape guards pots and raised beds from slugs.

Crushed eggshells and used coffee grounds scattered on the soil put slugs off and feed the ground into the bargain.

None of these are harsh chemicals, but go easy all the same. A light hand is kinder to the bees and beetles you’re trying to keep.

10. And What About Those Pesky Moles?

Now, my nemesis. Moles aren’t actually after your vegetables at all. They’re insectivores, hunting earthworms and grubs, and they get through a huge amount every day just to stay alive. The damage comes from the digging, not the dinner. 

Their tunnels heave up your beds and disturb the roots, which is why everything but my tomatoes keeled over.

So you don’t need to hurt them, and I wouldn’t want to. A few humane nudges usually move them along. Castor oil granules, or a soak of castor oil and water, make the soil taste unpleasant to them. Sprinkling dried mint, or planting daffodils, alliums and marigolds, can help see them off too. Since they’re really chasing grubs, keeping the grub population down makes your garden less of a magnet.

A barrier helps where a mole keeps coming back. Fine wire mesh or a board sunk a foot or so down along the edge of a bed stops them tunneling straight in.

If a mound does flatten a plant, don’t write it off. You can often coax a half-wrecked plant back to life with a bit of patience.

On the plus side, moles aerate your soil and eat the very grubs that would otherwise chew your roots. Frustrating as they are, they’re not all bad.

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