Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

By Harry RamosLast update: 2023-09-19

Garden pesticides make your pest problem worse if you apply them in the wrong ways. So, in case you plan to use garden pesticides on your plants, make sure to read the following information before using them.

Ways That Pesticides Make Your Pest Problems Worse

Stimulating Pest Reproduction

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

Applying the wrong doses of garden pesticides or using them at the wrong time of the insects’ life cycle can stimulate pest reproduction. For example, killing arthropods with a less-than-lethal amount of insecticides can raise egg-laying. Don’t feel so surprised when seeing a larger infestation of grasshoppers, spiders, and millipedes in a short time.

Resulting In Resistance

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?A, a tiny pest population can still survive at the first use of pesticides because of their different genetic makeup. They will pass along their resistance genes for the next generation. So, your subsequent uses just raise the less-susceptible pests. Pay attention that the pesticide resistance still occurs even when applying in the right way.

Low doses of pesticides can’t help you deal with this problem. On the contrary, this way might affect the beneficial insects in your garden.

Exacerbating Carpenter Ant Colonies

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

Carpenter ant colonies are harmful insects, but you can’t kill them in traditional ways. Spraying insecticide into a carpenter ant infestation just split them up to create separate colonies, making your pest problem worse. It’s best to remove their nest.

Destroying And Hurting Beneficial Insects

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

Nature has both harmful and beneficial insects. While the former destroys your plants, another helps you keep your garden safe and healthy. Beneficial bugs, for example, deal with pest populations (ladybugs, lacewings, and predatory wasps).

However, applying the wrong dose of pesticide can kill both bad ones and these good guys indiscriminately. The solution is that you have to learn about species of insect pests to identify which ones are good and bad for your garden.

Although birds aren’t insects, they can protect your plants by eating bugs. Using insecticides improperly can hurt them.

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

Dung beetles can protect your garden from flies because they feed on the livestock and wildlife’s feces. These materials are foods of flies and maggots. Using pesticides for a long time will kill dung beetles, increasing the fly population.

As you know, bees promote the flowering and fruiting processes, but fungicide, herbicide, and insecticide are harmful to bees.

A bat can consume around1000 insects in an hour, but it is sensitive to pesticides.

Encouraging Secondary Pests

Do Garden Pesticides Make Your Pest Problem Worse?

Although pesticides can help you remove the initial infestation, it’s not everything. If you accidentally kill beneficial bugs in this stage, mentally prepare for a secondary invasion. If you, for example, accidentally kill ladybugs while aiming at the spider mites, eating your cucumbers, you have no one who can protect your plants from the secondary infestation of whiteflies and aphids, which are foods of ladybugs.

Solutions

  • Instead of garden pesticides, you should consider alternative methods.

  • If pesticides are a must, you should choose non-chemical pest control measures. And it’s better to select the least toxic household pesticides.

  • You just should buy pesticides designed for specific pests. If you can’t identify the pests, you can ask the help of the Museums Victoria that provides an identification service.

  • When using pesticides, you have to follow the label instructions correctly for the best result and maximum safety.

  • You need to use urgent medical treatment once you suspect pesticide poisoning.

The garden pesticides make your pest problem worse when applying improperly. So, always make sure that you use the proper doses of garden pesticides on suitable insects. If not, your garden plants might be attacked by stronger secondary pests. What’s more, pesticides can worsen your pest problem because they accidentally kill your beneficial insects, increasing the pests.

I’m Harry Ramos, who's crazy about all things green. I’m here to share some experience in my gardening adventure and how to choose the best products for your garden. Let's dig in, get our hands dirty, and celebrate the simple, earthy pleasures of the garden together!


Related Articles