I was so sad when spider mites invaded and infested my tomato and squash plants. I am against spraying pesticides on food I'm going to eat and I found out that most "natural" pest control oils and sprays run 13-18 dollars at Home Depot. I saw that all those organic sprays contain is canola oil and water and 4% "emulsifier." So I saved my 15 dollars and I mixed 2 cups canola oil, two tablespoons dish soap (as an emulsifier) and 2 gallons water. I used a cheap pump type sprayer. remember to shake well to mix before spraying. This worked great on the spider mites and will work on aphids and other creepy crawlers that want to destroy your plants....and saved me some money!
Good idea and thanks for the recipe for safely keeping veggies safe. My little home has a small back yard which has to be free of weeds...my Mom doesn't like pesticides, so I went to research onliine and found a holistic way to stop weeds and found one. Boiling hot water to be poured over all the weeds and just do this on a sunny day. I let all the lizards and birds that visit my backyard to watch out I'm pouring hot water and wonderfully they stay away from my back yard when I'm pouring hot water to kill all the weeds.
Well thank you for sharing this, and we have been having some pest issue here lately so this might be just the thing that we need. On top of the money that they cost, I never really like the pesticides that you can buy because they just feel unnatural and bad for the plants, but I have to say that this sounds like a remedy for that. I will have to keep this one in my back pocket, so thanks again.
That's a great idea. I have never tried this, in fact I did not know how to make organic pesticides in home. I have different recipes to control pests and weeds in the garden. Hot ash when sprinkled over the plants will kill pests. You can also control weeds by making fire over the area where there is weeds.
Yes, liquid soap is supposed to be an effective remedy for many kinds of insects..Mixed with other things though like you did. I think that is smart because a penny saved is a penny earned. I am not growing anything at the moment though other than a few flours..and I don't think they have any problems at the moment..Thankfully.
We still have insecticide that we sparingly use and only for severe cases of infestation. For mild pest attacks, we use a mixture of a liter of water with 2 tablespoon of liquid dish washing soap. We have been using that improvised pesticide since 2009 when our home was attacked by ticks in droves. We saw the ticks parading in the street into our gate and onto our house. It was scary to see those hundreds of ticks that we were able to eradicate by the use of that mixture of liquid dish washing soap and water.
Thank you for the information. I use chili powder around all my veggie plants and have had good luck not needing anything stronger in keeping pests away. I am strongly against using pesticides on my food.
