Insects in the garden can be a distressing nuisance when they attack your flowers and food crops.  Of course you have to fight back, but you don’t want to add poisonous chemicals to the environment.  All organic gardeners know that there are several good ways to eradicate harmful insects without using pesticides.  One popular method involves setting traps.  Here are some tips for using insect traps to effectively control pests in any garden or landscape.

Before you take any steps to control insects, it’s important to remember that most of the insects in your garden are beneficial and play a useful role.  Only a relatively small number of bugs actually cause damage to plants, so these are the ones you want to target with pest control measures.

Sticky traps are very effective in catching many types of harmful insects.  You can buy sticky traps at a nursery or garden supply center.  You can also make them yourself.  Simply glue yellow or white paper to both sides of a piece of cardboard and spray with adhesive.  Hang the traps from tree branches or post them on stakes in the garden, close to plants that are susceptible to pests.  You can target specific pests by using certain colors.  For example, aphids, fruit flies, leafhoppers, leafminers, and whiteflies are attracted to yellow.  If you find that flea beetles, rose chafers, or tarnished plant bugs are causing trouble, try making white sticky traps.

Want to get rid of beetles?  Make a trap from a gallon plastic milk jug or similar container.  Cut off the top, leaving the handle on.  Squirt in a little dishwashing liquid and fill it with water.  Find a beetle-infested plant, put the jug under the leaves and give the stem or branch enough of a shake to dislodge the insects.  They will fall in the water and drown.  This is most effective done early in the morning, when bugs are moving slowly.

Are earwigs a problem in your garden?  Find an old hose and cut it into 6- or 8-inch long pieces.  Place them on the ground where earwigs congregate and leave them for a day or two.  Then shake the pieces of hose over a bucket of soapy water to empty them of bugs.  Continue trapping as long as necessary.

Catch flies by making a solution of 2 cups water, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar.  Pour the mixture into a large empty soda bottle and put it outside.  The flies will go into the bottle and drown.

To cut down the grasshopper population, bury a sixteen-ounce coffee can in the soil, up to the lip.  Fill the can almost to the top with a mixture of 9 parts water and 1 part molasses.  Grasshoppers and certain other pest insects will fall into the can and drown.

Slugs and snails can do a lot of damage to plants.  To catch these pests, place one or more boards in or beside your garden, with one corner raised slightly by a stone.  Slugs and snails will crawl underneath during the day to avoid the sun.  Then you can simply pick up the board and dispose of them.

Using traps can be a surprisingly effective way to control pest insects with minimal harm to beneficial insects.  As you will notice, none of these traps contain toxic ingredients, so there is no risk of contaminating plants or soil.  Don’t worry about trying to wipe out every pest insect.  The objective is simply to control their numbers and prevent them from causing excessive damage to flowers, food crops, trees, and shrubs.