You can have a beautiful, productive garden while working with nature to manage insect pests. As you incorporate various eco-friendly pest management strategies, you will encourage songbirds, beneficial insects, and pollinators to visit your gardens.

You will find slight variations of definitions, but most organic gardeners agree the focus is on cultivating a system that supports and sustains all its members. This includes plants, soil microbes, and other beneficial organisms.

As with any garden, it starts with creating a healthy soil foundation, selecting the plants best suited to the growing conditions, and providing them with proper care. When you do these things, you will be able to grow healthier plants that are more tolerant of pest attacks and more resilient when damaged.

Removing weeds from garden beds is an important pest management strategy. These uninvited plants compete with your desirable plants for water and nutrients. Many also attract and harbor plant-damaging insect pests and disease organisms in the garden.

No matter how well you plan, plant, and care for your gardens, insect pest problems can arise. Include nature’s pest managers in your organic garden approach. Ninety-six percent of terrestrial North American birds rely on insects for part of their diet. They also add color, motion, and entertainment to our landscapes.

Many beneficial insects eat or parasitize insects. Lady beetles, green lacewings, young and old, eat hundreds of aphids a day. Parasitic wasps, depending on the species, can attack specific or a variety of insects including caterpillars like the tomato hornworm, aphids, leafhoppers, scale, beetles, and true bugs.

Attract more beneficial insects, both pollinators and pest managers, to your gardens with plants. Grow plants like sweet alyssum, columbine, thyme, lavender, goldenrod, sedum, asters, and other plants that attract beneficial insects to your garden.

Be proactive by regularly monitoring your gardens. Look for emerging pest problems and the good guys stopping by to dine on them. You will need to tolerate some damage so there will be food to attract and feed the predators in the garden.

If intervention is needed, look for the most eco-friendly control options. Barriers of lightweight floating row covers protect against cabbage worms, Japanese and bean beetles, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, and squash vine borers on susceptible plants. Just cover the plantings with row covers immediately after seeding.  Since basil and beans do not need to be pollinated to produce the harvest, leave them covered for the season. Uncover squash, pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers when they begin flowering so pollinators have access to the blossoms. Research found vine crops in this manner limited damage by squash bugs, squash vine borer, and the cucumber beetles that can infect and kill cucumber plants with bacterial wilt.

If you forget to cover your cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts, enlist the help of a naturally occurring soil bacterial called Bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki (Btk) found in SummitÒ Biological Caterpillar and Webworm (SummitResponsibleSolutions.com).  It only kills true caterpillars and webworms and can be applied to edible plants right up to harvest.

A strong blast of water is a great first step in managing mites and aphids. It knocks them off the plant, helping minimize the damage. If needed, apply lightweight horticulture oils, like organic Summit® Year-Round® Spray Oil according to label directions. It kills a wide variety of soft-bodied insects in all stages (including eggs) on contact and poses few risks to beneficial insects that land on the treated plant.

Over time these eco-friendly strategies become part of your gardening routine. And the more we work with nature, the better it is for you, your plants, and the environment.

Melinda Myers has written more than 20 gardening books, including the Midwest Gardener’s Handbook, 2nd Edition and Small Space Gardening. She hosts The Great Courses “How to Grow Anything” instant video and DVD series and the nationally syndicated Melinda’s Garden Moment TV & radio program. Myers is a columnist and contributing editor for Birds & Blooms magazine and was commissioned by Summit for her expertise to write this article. Myers’ website is www.MelindaMyers.com.