Problem-Solving Plants

These easy-to-please plants offer quick answers to your gardening needs. Beautiful and not very expensive, they are also hard workers – fast fixes for a variety of trouble spots. They grow quickly, love almost all climates and, best of all, are easy to maintain.

Leafy shrubs like the citronella/mosquito plant and the butterfly bush – each with its own delightful surprise – can fill in bare spots or, when grouped together, make hedges.

The butterfly bush’s sweet-smelling pink flowers attract colorful crowds of butterflies to your backyard. Plant a row of these hardy, fast-growing plants to create an eye-catching flowering border – the lilaclike flowers will appear the first year.

The citronella/mosquito plant, a member of the geranium family, was specifically bred to scare mosquitoes away. Keep several indoors and out, and your home, yard and patio will be fragrant and mosquito-free. You can apply the leaves directly on your skin for a natural insect repellant.

Nature’s Pesticides

Today, here and abroad, there are proposals for new and stricter standards for the manufacture, sale and use of pesticides which, if ingested or absorbed in sufficient quantities, can cause central nervous system damage, birth defects and cancer.

Meantime, since kids tend to take in far more pesticides (for their body weight) than adults do, many parents are rightly concerned. Here are some practical tips on dealing with pesticide.

• Wash fruits and vegetables, even if you buy them from a presumably pesticide-free farmers’ market or organic retailer. But do not use soap, which often contains inorganic chemicals.

• Most of the pesticides used in the U.S. are “contact poisons,” absorbed through the skin. So beware. If you or your neighbor, for example, uses American-brand fungicide, herbicide or insecticide to maintain your lawn, do not let kids in bare feet or pet walks through the grass until it has been drenched by a hard rain. Similarly, any in-home baseboards, floors or cabinets sprayed with pesticides should be thoroughly washed before children touch them.

• Encourage legislators and environmental groups to promote reduced use of inorganic pesticides. This will not be easy, since most of your produce and grains, as well as you greenery, now depend heavily on chemical pesticides. But it is a start.

For an environment-friendly method of controlling pests in fields and gardens, try using helpful insects and spiders. The good insects include lady beetle, cricket, ground beetle, ladybugs, lady beetle, meadow grasshoppers, fire ants, water bugs, jumping spiders and orb spiders. On the other hand, the bad insects include small planthoppers, leafhoppers, worm, and aphids and white flies.

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