 Hi everyone, I'm Ron Corning with HowDini.com and gardening organically means gardening without pesticides. But how do you handle all those garden pests? Here to help us answer that today is Scott Meyer. He is the editor of Organic Gardening Magazine and Scott, the question on everyone's mind is can insects ruin your garden? Lots of gardeners get frustrated about seeing insects in their garden, but the truth is 80% of bugs are good bugs, beneficial that eat other bugs. So yes, insect infestation can ruin your garden, but it's not something to panic about. So generally speaking, if you use a chemical pesticide, you're going to kill all of the insects, including the good ones. And you don't want to kill those good bugs. The friendly ladybug, for instance, is a great beneficial insect that eats lots of other pests. The praying mantis, another one that lots of people are familiar with, is a great predator of other insects. So chemical pesticide kills everything. And it can also throw the ecosystem out of balance, right? That's true. And the basis of organic gardening really is to build a healthy, well-balanced ecosystem. Chemical pesticides kill the bugs, also harmful to birds and all the other things that eat the bugs. So yes, pesticides disrupt the balance. So what are the alternatives? Let's assume that you do have, even if in small quantity, harmful insects in your garden. How do you deal with it? The first thing you should do is watch and see what they're doing. Gardeners tend to panic when they see a bug, but it's not clear always from the beginning what the problem is. I brought here a leaf from our garden here. It's a from a broccoli plant. You can see this has been pretty well chewed up by insects. But the broccoli is still producing a beautiful head of broccoli. This is in harmful. And overreacting to this is more of a problem than the pest itself. Yeah, for me being an obvious, I would see this and thank my gardens and trouble. I think that's why gardeners want a solution and there are organic solutions. But the first thing to do is just watch and see what's happening. In fact, you have a number of products here that you use when you garden that can help board off some of those insects, including rose farm, which is peppermint oil. Oil is a great insect control. And the best thing about using an oil like that is that it's only harmful to the target pest. It doesn't hurt anything else. And peppermint oil helps to kill pests as well as fungus, which is a common problem on roses. And it smells pretty good because it actually smells pretty good as opposed to 100% garlic oil, which without even opening the bottle, you can smell it. Pretty pungent stuff, but totally harmless. And to you and to all the other animals, but not such a good thing for bugs. Where do you put it? Do you spray it on the soil? Do you put it on the plants? No, you spray it on the leaves that are being chewed. Ah, that's it. That observation, that's what's important, is also where is the bug and what's it doing? So this next one is insect soap, and it's not to give them a bath, but it can ward them off in some cases, right? In fact, it is a little bit like giving them a bath, because what it does is insects have a protective layer on them. The soap washes that off and makes them vulnerable to the conditions outside. It's great for the killing pests, but it needs to hit them exactly. It's not for spraying on the leaves and then waiting for the bugs to eat it, you have to hit them with it. There are some other things you can do that sort of pre-empts this process. And you've got a couple of examples, including something you can lay over your plants. What is that? A row cover? It's a special kind of fabric that allows light and air and water to come through, so the plants getting all the things it needs, but it's a fabric that prevents bugs from getting on the plants. And if you want to draw more birds to your garden, the birds that eat the insects, how do you do that, exactly? What are some of the ways? Put a bird bath in your garden and the birds will come. You also plant flowers around your garden, around your vegetable beds, because that attracts more beneficial insects. They eat the nectar and they also eat bugs while they're there. It's got to know a lot of gardeners talk about and worry about grubs. What do you have for that? There's a very effective organic solution for grubs that will solve your beetle problem too. It's called milky spore. It is a bacteria and you spread it on your lawn just the way you would spread lawn fertilizer. And it, bacteria, prays on the grubs and kills the grubs and over time it reproduces itself. So one or two applications and you'll never use it again because it spreads throughout your lawn and kills grubs year after year after year. Scott, what about some of the larger critters that can wreak havoc? Raccoons, mice, even deer in some cases? Any way to handle that problem? There's really one very, very secure guaranteed to work way. It's called a fence. Electric fence if you can do it, but a big fence and with deer, the higher the better they can clear an eight foot fence. In that case, you want to angle it so that the deer can't see where their feet are going to land. You can do some other things that will distract them or just tear them at least momentarily. So soap, the smell of soap, especially a very pungent deodorant soap will deter deer from coming in your garden. They're the most common marauders of gardens these days. Some reflective tape also can be effective in distracting them and making movement and any kind of motion in your garden will keep mammals and make them a little nervous and send them to your neighbor's garden. All right, Scott. Scott Meyer is the editor of Organic Gardening Magazine and I'm Ron Cording for HowDini.com.