Pesticides: why they shouldn't belong in the garden

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 an insecticide and acaricide against insects and mites, as a fungicide 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 have to 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 use 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 possibly carcinogenic ingredient glyphosate and some bee-killing neonicotinoids are still found in pesticides for 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. That this often not only affects the harmful insects, but also beneficials, is well known. 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 of these often polluting substances will have on our garden ecosystems and 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 2019, France will ban all five bee-hazardous neonicotinoids 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 a potentially carcinogenic herbicide, continued to be approved in the EU in 2017 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 brews: against many pests such as aphids help plant manure and extracts that on the one hand help to strengthen the plant and on the other hand drive away the little pests without releasing toxic substances into the environment.

Beneficial insects such as ladybugs and hoverfly larvae also consume 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 anyway in a functioning ecosystem. Instead of quickly eliminating a "problem" with chemical means, 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 mixed culture And insect-friendly environments often do not naturally require any pesticides at all. In the case of particularly severe infestations, such as the box tree moth As is often the case, alongside chemical bombs there are also natural products from biological sources, like ours Plantura Zünslerfrei XenTari^®that is effective, selective and sustainable at the same time. The ingredient is here by a bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis, produced.

Other natural products such as neem oil, plant broth or rock powder do not produce any toxic residues and can be used in the home garden without hesitation.

If you want more about the natural pest control If you want to know more, you can find more information here.