Passive aggressive pest control

Pests in the garden - and I'm not talking dogs, cats and recalcitrant husbands here - are more of a problem to me than to most.
Most other gardeners have an arsenal of stuff that kills slugs, snails, codling moth, whitefly, rabbits, white butterflies, ants and aphids.
But look in my garden shed and you'll find none of those.
The problem is, I don't like to kill things. My partner teeters between amusement and exasperation as he watches me chasing flies out of the kitchen, rescuing daddy-long-legs from the shower, and prising open the jaws of the cat to release a bird or a rat, but I can't help myself.
Just this morning I had to empty a barely used vacuum cleaner bag to liberate a spider I'd sucked up by mistake. Yes, I know, I probably suck up thousands of living creatures without even knowing it, but the point is, if I do know it, I'm accountable.
And there are alternatives to dousing the garden with chemicals just so you don't have to share your veges, plus there's the added advantage of being a bit kinder to the environment.
One thing I've figured out is that observation is a valuable tool. I have observed several families of slugs eating the leaves of my broccoli, only to lose interest once they'd passed a certain size (the leaves, not the slugs). Obviously, slugs are as discerning as humans when it comes to dining on the youngest, sweetest and most tender of leaves. So now, without any intervention but time, my broccoli plants are looking fabulously healthy, and the slug-bitten leaves are but a distant memory.
Similarly, I've observed that whitefly like only the green cos lettuce. I have green cos, red cos, oakleaf, buttercrunch and frillice in the salad department, and only the green cos is affected. A pity, because I recently became addicted to the Caesar salads served at the cafe next door to my office, which is why I grew it in the first place. So I've trashed it, and I'm sticking to the plants that are not susceptible. Red cos is almost as good.
Certain varieties of garden plants are not attractive to pests, and some plants run a protection racket for their neighbours: radishes protect cucumbers, tomatoes protect gooseberries, and horseradish looks after potatoes. I figure they're all worth a try, and at the very least, I'll grow some things, like horseradish, that would otherwise never have entered my head. I've also read that green onions planted among your lettuces will discourage rabbits, although a golden retriever and a cat are somewhat more instant deterrents.
Crop rotation is another useful method of pest control. My vegetable garden is new this year so I'm not up for it yet, but I'm told it helps.
Insects need time to become established in the soil and may take two or three seasons.
By rotating your crops, you can avoid providing an environment for plant-specific pests.
There will be times, though, when you'll be unable to resist a short-term fix. As an animal lover with an unacceptable number of dogs and cats, I was delighted to read that dog hair spread around the garden acts as a good pest repellent.
Considering the amount of dog hair that gets on to my clothes, I'm somewhat gob-smacked I have any pests at all.
But if you don't have a retriever and rabbits are a problem, a solution of cayenne pepper sprayed on the plants after rain might deter them. And rumour has it that bunnies don't love blood and bone, either, so it can be sprinkled around when planting. However, retrievers do love it, so keep that in mind.
If you're OK with killing pests but prefer to do it organically, there are countless recipes on the internet for organic pest sprays you can make at home.
I have to admit that they don't work anything like as well as the chemical varieties, but they're easier on the environment, and while they will kill bugs, they probably won't kill your retriever.

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