Keeping Pests Out of Your Container Cooking Garden

Posted by admin on September 21, 2008

There are some critters that are prone to hiding at the bottom of your plant containers in the drain holes. These bugs are snails, slugs, sow bugs, earwigs and millipedes. This occurs because over time soil drops out the hole creating nice haven during the heat of the day for these intruders to hide. Once it’s evening, these creatures come out to feast on your garden. We talked about snails and slugs in they yard and how to minimize their intrusion, this is another of their hiding places.

To keep these bugs out of their hiding place, you will need to cove the bottom of every planter pot that you use. The way to do this is to place a cutting of shade cloth on the bottom of the planter before adding your soil. Typically, you can find shade cloth in the gardening section of the major home improvement stores. You will likely have to buy a minimum of a yard of the material. Cut a piece to cover the hole, generally 3×3 for smaller pots, a good rule of thumb is to have th corners touching the sides.

Larger pots require a greater amount of material. For gallon size containers and larger, you will want to cut 6 inches more than the diameter of your pot, allowing the fabric to go up the sides about 3 inches all the way around. This is to ensure the coverage of all the holes in the bottom. When you add the soil, push on it gently to push some fabric into the hole(s) closing the space underneath the planter as well as keeping the soil contained. Having a container vegetable garden is one way for you to have a cooking garden year round.

To your success!