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While tending to our own garden we have found that one of the most frustrating things that can happen to a gardener is to walk outside to check on your plants. It’s just a routine walk to make sure that your garden is thriving, but you end up finding holes in all of your plants that looked fine only hours before. The explanations for some of these plant-destroying holes are garden pests. Some of the main garden pests are slugs, worms, caterpillars, birds, snails, and the occasional gopher. Although you can never wipe out these pests entirely, after all your hard work in the garden you have to do something.

Insects are one of the worst things to have in your garden; they can live under the soil, in old weeds or piles of leaves, or in a number of other places. In order to help keep insects away, always try and eliminate places in your garden and near your garden that these insects and other plant diseases could be living. Remove old leaves, weeds, or any other decaying matter that insects and diseases could be living in from your yard. Also, regularly turn over your garden soil and break apart any clumps of dirt so that you can eliminate the living spaces any insects that might be hiding underground.

Another way to rid your garden of the pests is to use dormant spray, which is used to keep destructive insects and diseases under control. It is best that you use dormant spray when your plants are dormant, usually around February or early March. I have used dormant spray many times on my garden and it has worked wonders on keeping insects out. But as we learned from experience, dormant spray is only effective if you follow the correct instructions. When we first decided to use some on our garden, we just dumped it everywhere in hopes of killing everything harmful. Unfortunately we ended up killing our entire garden along with our neighbor's. Some insects can be beneficial to your garden though, so be sure to find out which insects help your garden.

Another pest problem we've had besides insects has been birds. Whenever we >see birds in my garden I run outside a chase them away, but as soon as we step inside they come right back. The solution that we've come up with to keep the birds away from my garden is to put a bird feeder in the yard. Instead of costing time and money by eating our garden, the birds eat at the bird feeder. In the long run it’ll save you money. Not only can a bird feeder help keep birds away from your garden, but they can also be a new part of your yard decoration. Although not completely eliminating our bird problem, the bird feeder has made the problem smaller. Getting a dog has also helped.

If you start seeing mounds of dirt around your yard, and your plants keep inexplicably dying, you can assume that you have a gopher problem. Thankfully, this is one of the few garden pasts that we haven't had. However our friend has struggled with a tremendous gopher infestation, so we decided to research it. Gophers are rodents that are 5 to 14 inches long. Their fur can be black, light brown, or white, and they have small tails. One method of getting rid of these root-eating pests is to set traps. The key to successfully capturing a gopher using a trap is to successfully locate the gopher's tunnels and set the trap correctly. Another way to get rid of them is to use smoke bombs, which you place into the tunnel and the smoke spreads through out it and hopefully reaches the gopher.

If you suspect that your gardens are being pillaged by any of these pests, try your hardest to eliminate the problem as soon as possible. The longer you let the species stay, the more established it will become.