Summertime can’t be beat for backyard barbecues, enjoying the cottage and tending to your lawn and garden. But that’s not to say that summer doesn’t come without its challenges and perhaps one of the most annoying are pesky pests.

To be fair, most lawn and garden insects are beneficial with some naturalists claiming that fewer than two per cent are considered harmful. In fact, many insects, including ladybugs, fireflies, praying mantis, spiders and wasps will actually keep harmful insects from devouring your lawn and will also help to pollinate your plants. But it’s that two per cent that can wreak havoc on your plants, flowers and grass, making your best gardening efforts a big waste of time and money.

With that in mind, let’s look at how to handle unwanted pests without hurting beneficial insects and the world in which we live.

If your lawn is victim to a small infestation of unwanted bugs, you can try picking them off by hand. If that sounds unbearable, you can try homemade garlic and pepper sprays. You can also try insecticidal soap on pests.

Traps are another good eco-friendly option. The kind that allow an insect to enter and not leave are best for wasps and other bugs. Place insect traps around the periphery of your property so that the pests are taken out of commission before they’ve chewed up your grass and plants.

Bacillus thuringiensis or more commonly named BT is a naturally occurring soil bacteria ideal for controlling cabbageworm, tent caterpillars, gypsy moth, tomato hornworm and other leaf eating caterpillars.

To control beetles and other insects with shells, try diatomaceous earth, a fine silica powder made from the fossilized shells of already minute creatures called diatoms. The razor sharp powder destroys the shells of crawling insects, but does not harm earthworms, pets, or humans. Different bugs are susceptible to different extents (even beetles differ somewhat), so check before buying.

To identify a grub problem in your lawn, look for brown patches. If you’re still uncertain, dig up a bit of sod near the brown patch. If you see more than ten grubs per square foot, you should take action. Below that, there’s no need.

Use beneficial nematodes, which are tiny worms that feed on the larval, or grub, stage of the beetle. It takes a few weeks for nematodes to establish themselves in the soil and to parasitize their grub hosts, so it’s best to apply them before the situation has gotten completely out of hand. Be sure to carefully read the instructions for applying nematodes. Since they are living things they can also die. Follow the directions otherwise your time and money will be wasted.

What goes up must inevitably come down and for the first time in months the average sale price in Toronto did just that with detached homes dipping in July to below $1 million.

That figure is notable for more than just psychological reasons. With price tags below a million dollars, the real estate market is open to more consumers and that’s good news for everyone.

According to the Toronto Real Estate Board (TREB), August figures show the average detached home in the GTA sold for $972,212. That’s down from $1,000,336 at the end of July.  The average price in August has fallen about $230,000 or 19 per cent since the market’s peak in March.

It’s widely believed the provincial government’s new housing rules introduced in April put the brakes on the city’s red-hot real estate market, controls some believe were necessary to calm out-of-control housing prices.

While the price drop is great news for buyers, TREB says the market in the GTA is expected to post a record year nevertheless. According to TREB, the average sale price of a detached home in July was $996,970, which is still a 13.3 per cent hike over house prices from one year ago.

Says TREB’s board president Mark McLean:  As we move towards a new record for home sales this year, it is important to point out that home ownership demand has been driven not only by low borrowing costs, but also by the fact that the greater Toronto area economy has been performing quite well, with the unemployment rate lower compared to last year.

The under one million figure is an average that combines house sales numbers from across the GTA. If you’re looking at detached homes strictly in Toronto you are likely still paying in the seven-figure range. Based on TREB figures from August, single-family homes there still average about $1.2 million, though that figure is down considerably from March when it hit a peak of $1.56 million.

The $1 million mark is significant because of changes introduced in 2014 which excluded government-backed mortgages on homes sold for more than seven figures. The ban targeted hot real estate markets in Toronto and Vancouver.

Think foreign investment is the cause behind high-priced homes in Toronto and Vancouver? Or how about the immigrant population growth in those centres? Could it be a lack of developable land or maybe it’s speculators?

With the exception of something catastrophic, it’s rarely a single cause that will prompt the kind of heavy volatility we’ve seen recently in those housing markets.

In fact, the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank asserts that higher home prices are the result of declining interest rates and rising incomes that allowed Canadians to qualify for much bigger mortgages over the past two decades.

Increased borrowing power, brought about by falling interest rates and rising incomes, is potentially the most overlooked and least understood factor influencing home prices across Canada,  Niels Veldhuis, president of the Fraser Institute, said in a media release last month.

The study ” Interest Rates and Mortgage Borrowing Power in Canada ” says that between 2000 and 2016, interest rates dropped from 7 to 2.7 per cent. During that time, the lower interest rates increased a potential home buyer’s mortgage-borrowing power by 53 per cent.

At the same time, average family incomes grew by 53 per cent. And when you factor in low interest rates with higher wages, the mortgage-borrowing power of the average Canadian climbed by a whopping 126 per cent.

In terms of city centres with the highest mortgage-borrowing power, Calgary came in first at 161 per cent, followed by Vancouver at 118 per cent, Montreal at 115 per cent and Toronto at 100.

This increase in borrowing power ”in simple terms” means that an average Canadian family, dedicating the same share of their income to monthly mortgage payments, can afford a mortgage that’s more than twice as big now as it would have been in 2000, Veldhuis said.

Canadians potential to borrow more money has resulted in homebuyers bidding up the price of homes since the supply of housing is not immediately responsive to changes in demand.

As would-be homebuyers and governments contend with rising prices across Canada, policy makers should look closely at the impact of interest rates, rising incomes and increased mortgage borrowing power on home prices, Veldhuis added.