In many home gardens, pesticides are often used to control pests. We show why you should not use pesticides in the garden.
Pesticides, also known as plant protection products, include all substances that are used to protect plants and kill harmful organisms. They act as insecticides and acaricides against insects and mites, as fungicides against fungal diseases, and as herbicides against weeds.
Not only agriculture, but also private individuals and communities use the chemical substances. We would like to explain to you here why use in the home garden is particularly dangerous for the environment and gardeners and should definitely be taboo.
No control of pesticides
Farmers must prove their knowledge of the laws and the effects of the agents with their crop protection expertise before purchasing and applying them. This training must be refreshed every three years. Home gardeners, on the other hand, can simply buy toxic pesticides at the nearest hardware store without any background knowledge. Often the principle "a lot helps a lot" also applies at home and you get more than the recommended dose. As a result, residues of the pesticide often end up in the soil and groundwater - sometimes even on fruit and vegetables. Many pesticides have been proven to damage soil organisms and aquatic animals. The potentially carcinogenic ingredient glyphosate and some bee-killing neonicotinoids are still found in pesticides used in home gardens. How much of the toxic agent is used in home gardens each year is difficult to say. The BUND assumes around 500 tons per year, other sources speak of significantly larger quantities.
Unpredictable consequences of pesticides
Pesticides are not only used in large quantities in agriculture. In home gardens and communities, too, the chemical mace is used generously against insects and weeds. It is well known that this often affects not only harmful insects but also beneficial insects. Nevertheless, the remedies are often seen as a quick fix to an annoying problem. In the long term, no one knows what impact the use ofthese often environmentally harmful substances on our ecosystems in the gardens and our water quality. In politics, opinions differ on this. Most recently, only three of the bee-damaging neonicotinoids were banned in the EU Parliament - and only for outdoor use. From September 2022, France will now ban all five neonicotinoids that are harmful to bees nationwide, going one step further than the EU and Germany. The herbicide glyphosate is also still under debate. The herbicide, classified by the WHO as potentially carcinogenic, continued to be approved in the EU in 2022 despite lengthy debates and apparent interference from the pesticide industry.
Alternatives to pesticides
Many gardeners often see no alternative but to quickly resort to the destruction spray. You can also get rid of weeds simply by pulling them out by hand. If that's too tedious for you, you might try spreading mulch between the plants to suppress weeds. Another way to protect your plants biologically and naturally is, for example, to prepare decoction: Plant manure and extracts help against many pests such as aphids, which on the one hand strengthen the plant and on the other hand drive away the little pests without toxic substances in the environment release.
Beneficial insects such as ladybugs and hoverfly larvae also devour an incredible number of our pests. If you take care of them, you indirectly also take care of the aphid plague. A small infestation regulates itself in a functioning ecosystem anyway. Instead of quickly eliminating a "problem" with chemical agents, we should rather look for the source. It usually lies in the way we deal with nature, how we look after our garden and which plants we use to design our home garden. In a diverse intercropping and insect-friendly environment, one often doesn't naturally need any pesticides at all. In the case of particularly severe infestations, as is often the case with box tree moths, for example, there are natural products from biological sources in addition to chemical bombs, such as our Plantura Zünslerfrei XenTari®, which is effective, selective and is sustainable at the same time. The ingredient is made by a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis.
Other natural products such as neem oil, vegetable broth or rock powder do not produce any toxic residues and can be safely used in thehome garden.
If you are interested in learning more about controlling pests naturally, click here for more information.