Building My Defenses Against Pests, Naturally

In my second year of gardening, I'm super-paranoid that my garden is going to get taken over by pests of all stripes. The horror stories I read online have entire gardens getting swallowed whole by a monster swarm of something - slugs, beetles, whatever.

Last year I had very little issue with pests in my garden, which is lucky because I had no idea what I was doing. I've read a lot since then and of course learned from the issues I did have last year.

While my gardening is not strictly organic, I have no desire to put pesticides on the plants I plan to put in my mouth. I also respect the animals - including my dog - that may venture into the garden from time to time.

What surprised me in my reading was that certain plants actually can act like pesticides without the chemicals. Plants like garlic, onion, sage, mint and others have a stronger smell and may mask the smell of other plants that attract the insects we do not want to attract to our gardens. Certain flowers are recommended as well. I plan to plant some of those as well right next to my garden.

There are also plants that attract the right kind of insects to your garden, but I haven't gotten that far yet. Baby steps.

I started with sage and mint.

This weekend I planted both. I planted the mint in containers, set in two places in the garden.


Don't plant mint in the actual ground. It will take over. Several websites and books advise placing mint in containers in the garden. I'm giving it a shot this year. I will however have to remember to water it as it will not be watered by the drip system I have in place.

Mint times 2!

Because of the crazy amount of lettuce I planted this year, I am also worried about slugs. I plan to be proactive on this front, as there were some minor signs of slug action last year when I had just a handful of romaine lettuce plants in my garden. My broccoli was also eaten by something - possibly slugs. From everything I've read, slugs don't like sage - the rough leaves don't appeal to them. So I decided to plant sage on either side of my largest collection of lettuce. Will it make a difference? No idea. But sage is also a good plant to deter other harmful insects, as well, so I figure it can't hurt.

Oh, and it will add a splash of color and help cover the ground, which hopefully will slow weeds.

Sage next to the lettuce.

I'll supplement it as the lettuce gets a little bigger with used coffee grounds, spread around where the lettuce is planted. That is also supposed to deter slugs. I guess they aren't fans of Starbucks.