Like my foot?

Yeah.....just spray Gore with a hose.

Ridge got a bit of a green thumb this Summer with his first (mostly successful) garden. We're still harvesting every day. And we had all of the hungry little critters. Stark had this most excellent book, "The Encyclopedia of Country Living" (Carla Emery, Sasquatch Books) from which I learned a little trick. You can get rid of all of the bad guys and let the good guys (ladybugs and bees) have their way with a simple solution of crushed garlic and water in a spray bottle. A little here and there keeps the bad guys at bay. There's a substance in garlic called acillin (sp?) that is powerful enough to kill 'em with a direct hit. It will also kill skin cancer. No kidding. Ask me how...

Some time ago, when I owned a house and had a vegetable garden, I had an immense problem with slugs. Someone told me that putting as bowl of beer in the garden would cause the slugs to drown in it.

I gave it a shot. The next morning I go out to find the bowl overbrimming with dead slugs, but about twice as many chowing down on the veggies. Apparently, the bowl of beer was like saying "Hey, the bars open at irishgits" to the slugs.

I think it's not only a good idea but easier and less expensive to use environmentally friendly pest control methods ! 

Whatever you spray on your plants ends up in the water table,the reservoir,the fish you catch and eventually on your supper table.

I step on bugs a lot. Does that qualify as an environmentally friendly method of bug extermination?

I think what the book had in mind was to use pesticides that weren't quite so toxic. Of course, I have a slightly different definition. Instead of having rat/mouse poison pellets everywhere, I have a more efficient means of pest control. Her name is Peaches. And, with her around, all I have to do is give her dinner and pet her and she'll chase away all the mice.