The chances are the same bugs would just come back if you did replace the soil.
The garden is a place that abounds with insects and bugs. You need to deal with this fact of life and encourage the good ones and cope with the rest.
Trying to kill them ALL on sight is foolish because:
- there is no good reason for it, most are just minding their own business,
- you may harm organisms that are beneficial to the garden or that just happen to be in the way (including yourself, family, pets) or the environment at large,
- it is impossible to kill them all anyway.
There is no general solution to the getting rid of bugs. If there is a PARTICULAR case where 'bugs and insects' are causing harm you need to find the way to deal with the particularly ones in your situation (which does not necessarily mean kill them) that causes the least other problems. This means identifying and understanding your enemy.
As for the rest; adjust your thinking so that they cease to be a problem or you will have sleepless nights for the rest of your days. If it comes to a war of total annihilation, Bugs versus Humans, despite our propensity for genocide I am betting on the bugs, there are more of them and they have been around for much longer.
Let me give you a case study. In my district cabbage moths abound, these are white moths that lay eggs on plants of the cabbage family. Technically they are butterfiles but everybody calls them moths so it makes no difference. Their larvae hatch out and eat the leaves, if you want to eat the leaves yourself it is quite annoying to find a bunch of grubs got there first. For many people the first thing they will say is "spray the buggers - that'll fix 'em". And it will. For about a week. It will also 'fix' anything else that gets sprayed. After a week the industrious moths will lay another lot of eggs and we are back to square one. The simplistic solution is keep spraying every week. This is much trouble and has many unwanted side effects.
The thoughtful solution requires you to understand the bugs. Here are some useful facts. 1) The moths are only active in warm weather. 2) A moth is about 3-4cm across. 3) A female moth has to land on the plant to lay it's eggs, it doesn't do dive bombing.
Here is the answer: in warm weather cover the plant with 2cm mesh.
Good gardeners try to understand their garden. Bad gardeners don't bother to think they just kill on sight.
There are old motorcycle riders, and there are bold motorcycle riders, but there are no old, bold motorcycle riders. The local lunkheads apparently belong to a religion that renounced bafflers. I encourage them to speed.
It was 82F today, but you never know when a frost could hit. I think I should put down some fine gravel in the roadway, just in case.
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