5 Ways to Prevent Garden Pests Organically
Skip the harsh chemicals. You can prevent garden pests and diseases organically by building a healthier garden ecosystem from the soil up. When plants have the right foundation, they resist stress, bounce back faster, and attract the natural helpers that keep pests in check. The goal is not a bug-free garden, but a balanced one where beneficial insects, diverse plantings, and good habits do most of the work.
In this post, I’ll show you five practical ways to prevent garden pests organically. We’ll focus on strengthening soil life, pairing plants that support each other, rotating crops to break pest and disease cycles, scouting daily so you catch issues early, and relying on beneficial insects before reaching for sprays. If you prefer to watch, start with the video, then dive into the steps below to put these ideas to work in your garden today.
What We’ll Cover:
1. Focus on your soil
Most important! Healthy soil & healthy plants = fewer problems. Healthy plants are much less susceptible to pests and diseases. When a plant is struggling, it is more likely to succumb to damage from insects and other diseases.
Healthy soil, rich in organic matter and microbes, is one way to prevent garden pests organically. The microbes break down the organic matter and make it available to plants as nutrients. Your plants will be healthier as a result.
Take a good look at your soil; it should be rich, loose, and hopefully full of life, with worms and lots of good stuff! If it is, great! Keep up what you are doing. If it isn’t, take steps to correct it. The soil will improve over time as you make it a priority.
Consider getting your soil tested. This is the soil test kit I use.
- Determine your soil structure: Sandy, clay, or loamy types have different characteristics. Ideally, your soil is loamy, a combination of clay and sandy types. This is the most desirable for growing plants.
- Feed your soil! Worm castings and compost feed the microbial life in your soil. Add some each time you plant. Learn more about soil in this guide.
Over time, your soil structure will improve, and your plants will have what they need to thrive and resist pests and diseases organically. Learn more about adding soil to your raised beds in this blog post.
Tired of your lawn’s high maintenance and water demands? Consider these low-water-use ground covers as lawn alternatives.
2. Implement companion planting practices
Take advantage of plants that help each other grow, repel harmful insects, and attract pollinators and other helpful insects. Companion planting is an important part of organically preventing pests and diseases in the garden. Learn more about companion planting in this blog post.
Grow plants like basil, garlic, marigolds, and chives together to help prevent pests. Plant flowers like cosmos, sunflowers, and alyssum to attract beneficial insects to keep the garden healthy. Provide sources of food and water for pollinators like butterflies!
Attracting the right insects can make companion planting even more effective. Read Planting for Pollinators: Create a Simple Insectary Border in Your Garden for ideas that work in any space.
Here are a few of my favorite companion plants:
- Onions – Onions are great friends to tomatoes, the cabbage family, and strawberries. I plant one or two bulbs in and among all those plants. A type of onion that does well here in Arizona is I’itoi Onions. I plant them all around my garden.
- Nasturtiums – Prolific and edible nasturtiums may help repel squash bugs, blackflies, whiteflies, cabbage worms, and borers. Tomatoes, radishes, squash, and fruit trees benefit from nasturtiums planted nearby. Nasturtiums are also what’s known as a ‘trap crop‘; insects feed on and lay their eggs in trap crops instead of other areas around the garden.
- Marigolds – Tomatoes, strawberries, apple trees, and beans love marigolds. Marigolds discourage nematodes. Both marigolds and nasturtium are easily grown from seed and also self-seed easily.
3. Rotate crops to break pest and disease cycles
Pests and diseases usually target plant families, not single crops. Planting tomatoes or broccoli in the same bed year after year lets those problems build in the soil. Rotate by family so their preferred hosts are not waiting in the same spot next season. Move Solanaceae (tomato, pepper, eggplant), Brassicaceae (broccoli, cabbage, kale), Cucurbitaceae (cucumber, squash, melon), Fabaceae (peas, beans), and Allium (onion, garlic) to new beds and give each family 2–3 seasons before it returns.
Short on space? Rotate in time instead of space. Follow spring tomatoes with summer beans, then fall carrots or onions, or plant a cover crop or flowers for a season. Remove crop residues, skip volunteer seedlings that can carry issues forward, and note each bed’s family each season. Rotation starves pests of their favorite hosts and gives your soil biology time to recover.
4. Spend time in your garden each day
Make daily walks through your garden a habit. I love walking around and noticing the new growth and blossoms. Use this time to be on the lookout for problems as well.
- Check the undersides of leaves for eggs or bugs.
- Notice if caterpillar frass (poop) is present; it’s one of the easiest ways to spot hornworm caterpillars feasting on your tomatoes. If you see the frass, the hornworm is probably nearby!
- Look for damage to leaves or stems of plants, and look around for the culprit.
- Try to be in your garden when your drip or water system is running; you will spot leaks or watering problems immediately. A battery died in my irrigation timer last year, and it took me a couple of days to realize what had happened. No water stressed the plants, and the bugs moved in. I had to pull out infested cucumber plants.
- Cleaning up decaying plant matter can help manage roly-poly infestations. Learn more about how to get rid of pill bugs in this guide.
Spending time in your garden alerts you to small problems before they get larger. It’s much easier to pick off a few snails, squash bug eggs, or squash bugs than an army of them.
Here’s a tip: If check your garden in the morning, when it’s cooler, some bugs (like squash bugs) are more sluggish and easier to catch. Read this blog post to see the six things you should check for when you spend time in your garden daily.
Want to save water and create a gorgeous, eco-friendly landscape? Learn why replacing grass lawns with low-water-use groundcovers is a good idea.
5. Wait for beneficial insects to help you
The goal of organic gardening is to get a mini-ecosystem going on in your garden. A few aphids come, and then hopefully, here come the ladybugs.
Don’t be too quick to get rid of bugs. If the plant’s overall health won’t be affected by a couple of bugs, just keep an eye on it. Remember that when you spray, especially when you are using chemicals, you might kill the good guys as well as the bad guys. If you do decide to spray, start with water.
Always use a light hand, even with organic control methods.
Consider pulling heavily infested plants rather than treating them repeatedly. Often, plants become infested when they reach the end of their life cycle.
Learn to recognize beneficial and harmful insects in all their forms (eggs, larvae, pupae, adult, etc.). Be an informed organic gardener and welcome beneficial insects into your garden.
Lacewings
Green lacewings are not picky eaters and will feast on many garden pests, including leafhoppers, aphids, mites, thrips, mealybugs, whiteflies, and caterpillars. If you see these eggs, do a happy dance that you will soon have the help of lacewings in your garden.
Praying Mantis
A praying mantis will feast on a wide range of insects, including caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets, moths, and even butterflies. They can be an effective form of natural pest control in the garden. However, it is important to remember that they are not selective in what they eat and may also feed on beneficial insects like bees and ladybugs.
Looking for more organic pest control solutions that really work? Read this blog post.
FAQ about preventing garden pests organically
Rotate by plant family. Most pests and diseases target families, so move Solanaceae (tomato, pepper, eggplant, potato), Brassicaceae (broccoli, cabbage, kale), Cucurbitaceae (cucumber, squash, melon), Fabaceae (peas, beans), and Allium (onion, garlic, leek) to new beds each season. Aim for a 2–3 year gap before a family returns to the same spot.
Use with extreme care. Both can harm beneficials on contact. Spot treat only, spray at dawn or dusk, avoid open blooms, and test a small area first. Start with gentler options like a strong water spray, pruning, or handpicking before reaching for any spray.
Releases rarely stay put. Most purchased ladybugs fly away within a day. Create a habitat instead with flowering herbs and a shallow water source so resident predators stick around. Learn more about inviting and keeping ladybugs and other beneficials here.
A trap crop is a plant you grow to attract pests away from your main crop. Examples: nasturtium for aphids near brassicas, or ‘Blue Hubbard’ squash to draw squash bugs away from zucchini. Plant trap crops at the bed edge, monitor often, and remove or dispose of heavily infested trap plants before pests spread.
Pill bugs are decomposers, but can chew tender seedlings when populations surge. Thin heavy mulch around new plantings, remove decaying plant matter, water in the morning, and use simple traps like a board laid on soil to collect and discard them. Collars around seedlings and diatomaceous earth in dry weather can help. Full guide here.
Pull when a plant is heavily infested, not rebounding after basic care, or showing signs of viral or bacterial disease. Remove and trash the plant, clean tools, rotate the crop family, and consider soil-focused prevention before replanting.
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This is wonderful, comprehensive information. Any tips on pickle worms? Here in Florida, they are my biggest nemesis, destroying all my cucumber & squash plants.
So frustrating. The recommendations for the other types of worms (cutworms, corn earworms) could help.
Have you found anything to deter ants? They seem to be EVERYWHERE!!!
Ants may not be a problem and are often present. If the numbers get off balance, keep things a little more moist to deter them. You can also use these traps: https://amzn.to/3ZGivNi
Hi! I live in Surprise and have never had this before but, I have ants ALL OVER my garden. I suspect the super dry summer brought them inom the natural sound break between my home and the 303. They are smaller, dark, STINGING ants and they create small mounds in the middle and sides of my raised beds, in the middle of paths and at the roots of my irises,hollyhocks and roses. I don’t mind them being there with the exception that they are VERY aggressive. I tried boiling water in one mound in bed but it didnt really seem to help and it worry that the boiling water would kill the worms and microorganisms in my beautiful soil. I really don’t want to call an exterminator. Any suggestions?
I’m sorry. What a pain. You could try these bait traps. https://amzn.to/3NkY3fL
hello and happy new year!! we also live in Mesa arizona and this is our 5th year of trying to be gardeners! We’re ready to call it quits because of aphids! We have tried and researched multiple ways to combat them from a-z and still can’t get rid of them! So much time and money with nothing to show for it. Any “new” solutions?? thanks so much!
Happy new year! My question would be if you are using any pesticides or organic sprays? When things get off balance – as it seems they have in your situation it can be because there aren’t natural aphid predators around that can help. If that isn’t the case generally I recommend a wait and see approach and natural predators often help out. You can also use strong sprays of water a couple of times a day.
Hi. Our garden is overrun by crickets. Any thoughts?