Summer problem-solving: GARDEN PESTS

The warmer months are not only enjoyable for gardeners, they're also boom-time for pests. Help your plants shrug them off with Alan Titchmarsh's easy guide

AIthough it's easy to get hung up on plant pest problems, let's be honest, it is hard to reconcile an organic and wildlife-friendly approach to your garden when pests are doing their level best to disfigure your plants.

Last month I looked at ways to minimise the effects of plant diseases; this month I'm dealing with plant pests: not the birds and mammals but the invertebrates - the insects, slugs and snails that can be among the most dispiriting of garden visitors.

But let's get real. You are never going to banish them completely, and in a garden run on organic lines they are, like it or not, part of the food chain. Even wasps - which everybody seems to detest, mainly on account of their sting- contribute to pest control as they feed on small insects such as aphids, as well as sugars in the form of nectar and honeydew.

Learning to develop a more relaxed approach will not only help lower your blood pressure but, once the food chain has settled into a natural cycle, you will notice fewer epidemics since the natural predators of certain plant eating or sap-sucking insects will have been allowed to build up in numbers rather than being discouraged by the use of non-selective insecticides and chemicals.

Even products that only target greenfly and blackfly are by their very nature removing a part of the food chain that supports valuable predators, so even they interfere with the natural order of things. What's important is that you have a garden where occasional rises in the population of certain pests will almost always be temporary, thanks to the intervention of other forms of life that feed on the things we consider the baddies' - the plant pests.

What are plant pests?