If you've recently bought your first single family home with the idea of growing your own vegetable and flower gardens, you're undoubtedly really looking forward to having freshly picked produce for the table as well as surrounding your home with beds brimming with beautiful flowers. However, if you're like many modern consumers, you're mindful that harsh chemicals are used in many lawn and garden products designed to minimize the presence of weeds as well as insect and pathogen pests.  Fortunately, strategies exist designed to minimize or even completely eliminate the use of chemically based herbicides and pesticides in home gardens and lawns. Following are three of them. 

Use Native Plants

Because plants that are native to a particular region are already genetically acclimated to the area's specific pathogens, soils, and climate conditions, they don't need to be babied along using chemical controls. As an added benefit, they'll need less summer watering than their non-native counterparts because they're adapted to the area's rainfall — in fact, except in times of drought, native plants shouldn't need any extra watering at all. Your local nursery professional or county extension office can provide information on which plants are native to your area. 

Cultivate Healthy Plants By Building the Soil

Healthy plants are far better equipped to fend off pathogens and pests than their unhealthy counterparts. When plants are stressed, they expend the majority of their energy simply trying to survive, but when they're already healthy, they've got the strength to overcome the majority of insect and fungal pests. Furthermore, thick, thriving stands of plants don't provide weeds with the opportunity to become established — weed seeds need bare patches of ground in order to sprout and grow. Healthy plants depend on healthy soils, and healthy blended soils have significant amounts of organic material. One of the best ways to provide this is to incorporate compost into your soil. Many homeowners choose to create their own compost using outdoor compost bins, while others find that purchasing compost is a better option. 

Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Yard

Encouraging the presence of beneficial insects helps keep pest populations in check. Ladybugs eat aphids, mites, leafhoppers, and other insect pests that routinely ravage plants. You can attract ladybugs to your yard by planting herbs and flowers such as yarrow, dill, coreopsis, cosmos, and various types of asters. You can also purchase ladybugs from home and garden retailers and let them loose in your yard.