Welcome to Day 25 of my 30 Day Challenge: How to Start a Vegetable Garden.

My Garden Journal

My most recent article: How To Start A Vegetable Garden - 30 Day Challenge - Garden Journal - Do You Keep One? inspired me to start my own garden journal. My only regret is I didn't think of this sooner.

So, I've started to blog daily about my garden on my website. You can subscribe by email for daily tips and updates on my garden.

Garden Pests

There are many different types of garden pests. These include bugs and slugs, but also birds and animals that try to eat our garden vegetables.

You have many options to deter these pests. But before you reach for the chemicals, why not try some organic options.

Organic Solutions

Here are a few of the organic garden pest control options I am using in my garden.

• To deter bugs on plants, spray the leaves with a solution of water and liquid dish soap. A fellow gardener provided the recipe: 1 teaspoon of dish soap for every quart of water. (Thanks, Kevin for this tip!)

• I've also found that watering my plants with "dirty water" has kept the creepy crawlies to a minimum. Each time we wash our hands, we collect the water for our container plants. The lettuce has really thrived off of it and I've seen very few bugs on the plants. We use a foaming hand soap which is a very mild solution.

• Coffee grinds are a great bug deterrent. Place a circle of grinds around your plant to create a shield against bugs. Mix it in the soil and sprinkle it on top of the soil for lettuce: it is a great fertilizer for them and it has the added benefit of repelling slugs and ants as well.

Tip: If the plant loves nitrogen rich soil, use new coffee grinds on the plant. However, some plants prefer low nitrogen soil, so used coffee grinds are best for these plants.

• Got ants? Sprinkle Splenda around the ant hills. They are attracted to the sweetness and carry it back to the nest. It will kill the ants without harmful insecticides.

• Use pinwheels to keep rabbits and birds away. I have pinwheels around my container garden and in my raised bed and I have seen first hand how these tacky lawn ornaments deter the birds. Use them to keep rabbits out of your garden also as the movement will frighten them away.

My Results

We have used all of the organic garden pest control ideas above in our garden.

We do not have a fence around our garden. We don't even have one around our yard.

We have a family of rabbits who have lived under our shed for the last two years. The shed is only 25 or so feet from my garden and I have been dreading the potential garden damage from them.

So far, we have had minor damage to our potato leaves from potato flea beetles. A few strawberry leaves that were hanging over the edge of our raised bed were eaten by the rabbits. I have seen slugs around our garden, but they don't seem to be bothering our plants ... yet.

I would have to say that this combination has been success for our garden. It is still early in the season and I will keep you all updated as the summer progresses, but so far so good!

30 Day Challenge

I hope you are enjoying my journey as I learn how to grow so many new vegetables in my garden. Please continue to update me on how your garden is doing, as well as what you may be struggling with.

Note: This photo is of my raised bed. You can see the large pinwheels in the center and the small ones around the edges. I have peas, zucchini, squash, broccoli, and cauliflower planted in this half of the bed, although they are still in their early stages of growth.