Ignore them. Except for the annoyance of the ant bites, they are not an obstacle to gardening.

There are many ways to get rid of fire ants. You can use a mixture of sugar and borax. Pour the mixture around the ant hills, and the ants will carry it inside the colony, killing it off. Another solution is the sugar substitute, Equal or Nutri-Sweet. These have been known to be poisonous to ants. Just pour it around the hill and you will see little any bodies laying around in a couple days. Like the others have said, if it's garden ants let them be - unless it's a huge infestation. Here is a link that might be useful: Ants In The Vegetable Garden

'Pests' includes a lot of animals besides snails. I don't know whether snails attack alliums, but some pests definitely do. And even if animals don't like them, that benefit wouldn't last into the next year. Every year is kind of a fresh new world for pests. As far as snails go, the snails come out at night. If you go out at night with a flashlight and a bag, you can collect many snails in the bag. They slowly crawl out, and you may have to periodically put them back down in the bottom of the bag. Do this several nights in a row. It will make a difference. You can relocate the snails far away from your veggie garden, or kill them humanely somehow (freeze them or feed them to crows or whatever). Snails favor damp conditions. Don't over-water. Let the garden dry out as much as possible in between watering. (If you have lots of rain, not much you can do...). Remove snail habitat. They like to hide somewhere dark and damp during the day. Under low plants, in the leaf litter, under old tarps. You can seek them out by day in those places, and also, you can remove the leaf litter, trim low branches and leaves, and generally reduce snail habitat around your veggies. Copper definitely doesn't work, or didn't for me. Snails crawl right over it with no sign of distress. There are certain types of mechanical barriers which are not passable for snails. It is hard to describe, so I will link to a picture. I think this would only work if you have a nice raised bed or are doing container gardening. Note that the barrier in the picture is made of copper, but I don't think that matters. The reason it works is that they simply cannot contort their bodies around that sharp edge to get past the barrier. Good luck, and don't get discouraged! --McKenzie Here is a link that might be useful:

Dave, I can see spraying for tomato foliage diseases on a preventative basis, but not so much for bugs and insects unless you know they're waiting to zoom in abnd do every year. Most folks I know spray with the Ortho product b'c it's excellent at preventing tomato fungal foliage diseases, which are usually worse than the bacterial ones, for which there aren't very good products anyway. You say you think you had blight, but blight is just a general term and doesn't relate to any one specific disease. When talking about "blight" are you talking about the foliage infections that are so common for everyone or something more serious as in a systemic disease ? Try Pyrethrin to try and control the cuke beetles but the best prevention is to use floating row covers and then take them off when blossoms appear so that pollination can occur. Even if the cuke beetles transmit disease at that time you'll still have time to get fruits before plant death starts b/c it takes a good month from time of transmission until symptoms appear. Carolyn