Slugs and snails tend to prefer areas of consistent moisture, hiding out in places that shelter them from the sun and heat during the day and coming out to feed at night, or on drizzly days. If a garden happened to be watered too often, that might encourage them to stick around and breed. Our Slugs and Snails - Vegetables and Slugs and Snails on Flowers web pages provide management tips to reduce the population and discourage them from coming back. Be aware that, if a pesticide is used (even if organic), it needs to be labeled for application around vegetables.

Millipedes and centipedes do look alike, being hard-shelled and somewhat wormlike in shape, but can be easy to tell apart (if they hold still long enough). For each segment of their body, centipedes have one pair of legs and millipedes have two, so millipedes have many more legs overall than centipedes. Generally, centipedes also run around a lot faster than millipedes. Centipedes are predators that eat garden pests and are considered good to have around. (They might bite if captured and handled, but are otherwise not harmful and ignore people.) Slower-moving millipedes are also beneficial, but in a different way: they eat decaying organic matter, and will help to clean-up scraps of leftover vegetables, dead plant leaves, and so forth, recycling the nutrients back into the soil for living roots to absorb. Neither needs to be removed, but lots of millipedes in a garden can indicate that it is staying too moist, or might have lots of undecomposed organic matter (like compost that was spread which wasn't finished composting yet).

Dark specks on broccoli and brussels sprouts are probably aphids, a very common plant pest. Fortunately, aphids are easy to manage and don't often cause serious damage to plants. Information on the linked page provides control tips. The simplest and most sustainable method is to either squish them or blast them off of the plant using a strong garden hose spray of plain water.

For crops that don't need flowers to be visited by pollinators (which includes leafy greens and crucifers), they can be protected with row cover or a fine insect mesh as soon as they are planted, which will block access to most pests while letting enough light in for good growth. (Row cover also provides the benefit of a few degrees of frost protection.) The cover can be draped over half-circle hoops to hold it above the plants, and pinned-down on the sides, and lifted off once you are ready to harvest. It won't keep soil-dwelling pests out (though it will help more if it can be tucked closer to the stems so very little soil is covered), but other than slugs/snails, there are few soil-dwelling pests of these types of vegetables to worry about. (In that case, make sure any bunched-up areas of fabric don't keep plant stems wet by reducing air circulation so they don't succumb to fungal rot.)

If you suspect you might be accidentally over-watering the garden, feel the soil before watering to make sure it's getting dry to the touch a few inches deep, not just on the surface. Seeds that are germinating have little tolerance for drying out, so they are an exception and may need frequent light waterings if sown in the ground. (Those sown indoors ahead of planting are easier to monitor of course.)

If useful, information on our vegetable pages can help with planting and care tips, plus listing which pests or diseases are common problems so they can be addressed before (or soon after) they appear so they don't cause much damage. If you notice a problem on this year's plants, feel free to send us photos for identification as soon as you notice symptoms or suspected pests.

Miri