iltaf wrote:
Hi everyone,


am new to the forum. Please can i get some advice of how to get rid of
bugs and insect in the soil.



Why? Who told you that you need to do this?


What happened is last week i removed all my old old, and underneath
them i could find all types of insects.



Please can you advise how i can treat the soil, as i cant afford of
buying new soil.


The chances are the same bugs would just come back if you did replace the
soil.

The garden is a place that abounds with insects and bugs. You need to deal
with this fact of life and encourage the good ones and cope with the rest.

Trying to kill them ALL on sight is foolish because:

- there is no good reason for it, most are just minding their own business,
- you may harm organisms that are beneficial to the garden or that just
happen to be in the way (including yourself, family, pets) or the
environment at large,
- it is impossible to kill them all anyway.

There is no general solution to the getting rid of bugs. If there is a
PARTICULAR case where 'bugs and insects' are causing harm you need to find
the way to deal with the particularly ones in your situation (which does not
necessarily mean kill them) that causes the least other problems. This
means identifying and understanding your enemy.

As for the rest; adjust your thinking so that they cease to be a problem or
you will have sleepless nights for the rest of your days. If it comes to a
war of total annihilation, Bugs versus Humans, despite our propensity for
genocide I am betting on the bugs, there are more of them and they have been
around for much longer.

Let me give you a case study. In my district cabbage moths abound, these
are white moths that lay eggs on plants of the cabbage family. Technically
they are butterfiles but everybody calls them moths so it makes no
difference. Their larvae hatch out and eat the leaves, if you want to eat
the leaves yourself it is quite annoying to find a bunch of grubs got there
first. For many people the first thing they will say is "spray the
buggers - that'll fix 'em". And it will. For about a week. It will also
'fix' anything else that gets sprayed. After a week the industrious moths
will lay another lot of eggs and we are back to square one. The simplistic
solution is keep spraying every week. This is much trouble and has many
unwanted side effects.

The thoughtful solution requires you to understand the bugs. Here are some
useful facts. 1) The moths are only active in warm weather. 2) A moth is
about 3-4cm across. 3) A female moth has to land on the plant to lay it's
eggs, it doesn't do dive bombing.

Here is the answer: in warm weather cover the plant with 2cm mesh.

Good gardeners try to understand their garden. Bad gardeners don't bother
to think they just kill on sight.


David