If there are pests in the lawn, it shall turn – no, not blue – but different shades of yellow and brown. Lawn pests reside both above and under the ground surface; therefore, while spraying pest control chemicals makes your eyes believe the pests to be gone forever, in real, they just stay undercover waiting for the effects of the pest control chemicals to recede. These, being chemical compounds are often volatile by nature; as a result, they often fail to reach the real habitats of the pest and sometimes, cause major damage to the plants. However, with organic pest control measures, such adversities and incompetency can easily be avoided. Perhaps this is why organic lawn pest control methods are receiving a renewed interest today.

Nevertheless, the term organic comes with a certain amount of confusion and misunderstanding attached to it; therefore, let us discuss first what organic depicts.

If we go as per its very definition, a compound can be termed organic if there remains present carbon. That makes organic pest control medications to be based upon naturally occurring compounds, though they can also be synthesized in the laboratory. Pest control in an organic way thus comprises an IPM (integrated pest management) practices and the product must be biodegradable to maintain an environment less adulterated and more naturalized.

That implies organic pest control measures to cover an entire range of natural and organic products to relieve pest-related stress; integrated pest control methods combine together two or more of these to provide the most effective solutions. This is because pests can grow immune to inorganic repellants and not to the organic pest control measures.

Now, organic pest control can be divided under a few heads and its paramount to know first which one to use under what circumstances.

• For Weed Control: Weeds are pests as well, especially the ones like the evening primroses. A healthy and vigorous turf can be the best answer to such weeds; together with corn gluten meal (one of the chief ingredients for dog foods and cooking oil), they start working literally at the grass-root levels to fight the problem-causing vegetations.



• For Insect Control: Nature had set her balance by supplying the world with harmless insects along with the harmful ones. These harmless insects are natural enemies to the harmful ones; examples include the nematode species that predate on the mole crickets and sod-webworms.



• Slug and snail control: Diatomaceous earth and even beer! Sprinkle the ground with the first and keep a dish full of it in your garden; at worst, you just have to bear with the smell of rotten flesh till they reduce to nothingness. But hey, that’s good fertilizer to your garden soil!