Recently more and more wasps decide to make my greenhouse their new hangout spot. Flustered with the issue, I wanted to take matters into my own hands and looked up all the information I could find to keep these little buggers out of my Growing Space.
How to keep wasps out of your greenhouse?
- Remove the reason wasps come to your greenhouse (food, water, shelter)
- Seal off your greenhouse and make sure there aren’t any entrances for wasps
- Provide them an alternative Shelter by setting up an Insect Hotel
- Plant Flowers away from the entrance of your greenhouse
- Avoid leaving any sweet food in your greenhouse
It’s essential to understand why are the wasps attracted to your greenhouse in the first place. If you blindly follow advice from somebody without knowing what makes wasps come near your greenhouse, then the issue won’t go away.
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Why are Wasps attracted to your greenhouse
There are many reasons Wasps are attracted to your garden or your green room, but the major three reasons are:
- They have something to feed upon there, likely insects near your plants that they can eat.
- They have water to drink in your garden or your greenhouse.
- They have built a nest there or are looking for shelter.
You can start by ensuring that the wasps don’t have these reasons to stay in your garden or hang out casually. We hope that they haven’t built a nest yet, but the rest can be dealt with easily.
The best way to discourage wasps from setting foot into your greenhouse
Killing the wasps is often not the right approach as it doesn’t take care of the root cause. There are always better and innovative solutions that you can use to keep the wasps away from your greenhouse.
Seal off your greenhouse and make sure there aren’t any entrances for wasps
One of the most effective ways, if not the most, is to seal your greenhouse so that the wasps can’t get inside. After all, they won’t make holes in the walls, wood, or any other surface to get inside the greenhouse and mess around with your plants.
If you can successfully manage to seal off the greenhouse entrances and boundaries, you will be much safer from any potential wasp attack. All you have to do is checking your greenhouse for potential entrances and closing off all the gaps. To keep air circulating, cover windows using a mosquito net.
Provide them an alternative Shelter by setting up an Insect Hotel
If you can’t seal off the entrances or don’t know where the wasps are coming from, this alternative method might help you. All we want to achieve is to get the wasps out of your greenhouse by providing a more attractive alternative. This way, they can stay at the alternative shelter rather than staying inside your green room. The alternative shelter can be an insect hotel-like place where they have what they feed on, water, and a place to stay like a nest.
Water
Water is a pool party for Wasps. The good news, you can easily manage the water situation in your greenhouse, make sure that there’s no standing water at any time, and you are good to go. Make sure there are no overly wet surfaces either.
Insects
Wasps are crazily attracted to insects. Aphids are the tiny animals these wasps can feast on. Ensure that there are no insects nearby, and there will be no wasps either.
Flowers
Wasps love flowers because of their sweet taste, which can leave them hungry for more. A few flowers don’t attract wasps, like Geraniums and Marigolds, but most of the flowers will keep the wasps thirsting for more.
To avoid having this problem, you can keep your greenhouse contained and your flowers away from the entrance. However, don’t remove all the flowers from your garden. They are essential for a healthy pollinator population.
Food
Wasps love insects, and they love food as well. Never leave food in your greenhouse or your garden. No matter what kind of food it is, it will keep attracting wasps.
Benefits of Wasps and why they aren’t just all bad
Wasps also have their benefits, and they are not entirely villains. Here are the prime benefits that you can get from wasps.
Wasps as Pollinators
Wasps can contribute to your pollination requirements. While they don’t collect pollen to transfer it between flowers, they are attracted to the nectar in flowers, making quite a useful contribution.
Fig Wasps are a special kind of Wasps that are incredibly useful for pollinating fig trees. They are the prime pollinator of fig trees hence entirely responsible for each other’s existence.
Free Pest Control
The presence of pests and insects can damage your plants in your garden. Wasps are great at managing harmful insects; they keep your green buddies clean from all the small insects that might snack on them.
Insects like aphids, flies, caterpillars, mosquitos, and many other pests, are popular food sources of wasps. This is a huge benefit for people who currently face an insect-outbreak, as the wasps will take care of it for you.
How to temporarily coexists with Wasps in your greenhouse
Despite being known for being buggy, harmful, and annoying, wasps are not that bad. They don’t go out of their way to sting you. They won’t mess with you if you don’t mess with them.
Avoid waving your arm at wasps in your greenhouse. This makes them feel endangered, encouraging a defense reaction. Swatting them or trying to remove or destroy their nest won’t be greeted with gratitute either, they will make sure to repay in kind with their little stingers.
Not only that, the Wasp venom contains a pheromone that alerts other nearby wasps to come and defend the wasp in question. It’s best to avoid confrontations altogether – by having enough space between you and the wasp(s).
What you should do is treat them nicely and let them do their business without messing with them. If you are near them, you can move slowly and peacefully as if you pose no danger to them.
Wasps nests are, however, a big problem, especially if they are near or inside your greenhouse. It becomes incredibly tricky to coexist with the wasps in this case as you have to be impossibly cautious and take care of yourself and your precious plants. In this case, removing the nest is the best course of action.
How to get rid of a wasp nest in your greenhouse
While there are a few ways that you can experiment with, there are a few things you should absolutely not do about the wasp nest in your greenhouse.
- Do not mess with a large nest. Trust us on this one. It will be crazy and catastrophic if you do manage to knock it down.
- Don’t try to put it on fire. It won’t work.
- Don’t throw boiling cold water at it – it doesn’t work either.
- Don’t try vacuum cleaners – just don’t.
A tiny nest can be carefully removed during a cold-ish night. Carry the nest (in a sealed container) away from your garden to a place where they won’t bother anyone. Place down the nest, and they won’t bother you again if you implement the above-mentioned methods to keep them out of your greenhouse.
I advise you to stay away from a bigger wasp nest and let an expert handle the issue. Once he removed the nest, make sure to protect your greenhouse from future wasp-colonization by sealing all the wasp-doors.
