10 Great Homemade Pesticides

Whenever I hear the word pesticide I can’t help but picture a sterile landscape devoid of any wildlife, both beneficial and predatory.  If you feel the need to use a pesticide then you are either not giving your plant life the attention it needs or some outside force is at play.

No landscape can be considered ‘healthy’ unless it has beneficial as well as predatory insects. Nature has a remarkable way of maintaining a proper balance between the two without our help. However, sometimes an imbalance is created, through no fault of your own, by something being introduced into the environment. Maybe it is caused by the introduction of an pest infested plant, maybe some well-meaning neighbor sprayed their yard and chased some unwelcomed guests into your yard.

For these situations you may find it necessary to use a pesticide. If so, then your first thought should always be to make your own instead of running to the garden center for some man-made chemical. I don’t care how ‘safe’ the label claims the product to be. Save your hard earned money and the health of your plants by using one of these easily made natural concoctions.

1-Mild soap and water.  One of the safest and most effective homemade pesticides is some dishwashing soap mixed with water.  In general, it just takes a few drops of soap into a spray bottle followed by water.  You don’t need to use an excessive amount of soap to get the trick done (just one tablespoon).  Basically, this mostly irritates the pests and gets them to leave on their own.

2-Spearmint hot pepper horseradish spray.  To make this powerhouse recipe mix ¼ cup of hot red peppers, ½ gallons of water, ¼ cup of fresh spearmint leaves, ¼ cup of horseradish (both the root and leaves), and ¼ cup green onion tops.  You basically soak everything in water for several hours (overnight) and then drain and save the water adding 1 tablespoon of liquid dish soap.

3-Salt and water. This is a very simple irritant used to chase away cabbage worms and spider mites. Mix 2 tablespoons salt in 1 gallon of water and then spray that mixture onto your plants.

4-Oil and soap spray. You can also mix in one cup of vegetable oil (sunflower oil, corn, soybean, or even peanut oil will work) with one tablespoon of mild liquid dish soap and two cups of water.

5-Ammonia spray.  This one is not my first choice as the smell is really strong and the ammonia can have negative effects as well (especially if you use too much).  You mix this in a 1:7 ratio with water and apply the solution to the infected area.  This should get rid of most insects (reapply as needed).

6-Citrus spray. Soak 1 cup of lemon or orange peels, ¼ cup of spearmint leaves (or sage), and ¼ cup of lavender leaves overnight in a gallon of water.  Drain this mixture and save the water along with 1 tablespoon if liquid dishwashing soap and then apply that solution to your plants.

7-Wormwood tea.  If you have a problem with moths, slugs, snails, or even moles and gophers you might want to mix up some wormwood tea.  This involves about ½ pound of Artemesia leaves (A. Absinthium is common wormwood) along with 6 pints of water.  You coarsely chop the leaves and bring them to a boil in 2 pints of water. Then you simmer that solution for 30 minutes pouring the result into a spray bottle along with a quart of fresh water.

8-Sugar and boric acid.  If you find yourself struggling with an army of ants (or in an all-out battle) you may want to mix one part confectioner’s sugar to one part boric acid powder and sprinkle that around the perimeter of ant mounds or anywhere you see a lot of ant activity.

9-Garlic spray.  You can soak 1-15 diced garlic cloves in 2 cups of mineral oil for 24 hours and then strain that solution adding the liquid to a spray bottle.  Then apply that to your plants.

10-Onion, peppers, and garlic.  If you really want something that packs a nice punch then you can grind 3 large onions, 3 hot peppers, and 1 bunch of garlic and place them into a gallon of water.  Let that mixture sit overnight and then strain the spices and top off your gallon with fresh water.

All of these solutions should be applied thoroughly to the surface of the plants or grass including any underside to make sure that you don’t leave the pests a safe haven to hide and/or feast on while the effects of the natural pesticide wear off and/or get washed away by rain and/or your sprinkler system.

Take note that you can grow almost all of these ingredients in your own garden.

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Agrichemicals Are Not Needed or Welcomed

I read a commentary posted in Grist entitled “Agrichemical industry steps up pressure on White House organic garden”. The author compared the mafia’s infamous ‘protection scheme’ with an agrichemical company’s letter writing campaign to ‘entice’ Michelle Obama into using chemicals on the White House garden.

Okay, this is a bit of a stretch.

You can’t fault agrichemical companies for pushing their products because that’s what businesses do to stay alive. However, you can fault them for the tactics they use to sell those products: mis-information and the omission of relevant facts.

Despite the amount of data available warning of the toxic side effects of chemicals in the gardens, to humans, pets, soil and wildlife in general, far too many home gardeners are buying into the wrong-headed notion that chemical ‘protection’ is required to have a healthy and productive garden.

If gardeners would concern themselves with maintaining the health of the soil, which in turn promotes the health of the plant, there would be no need for chemicals. Pests don’t attack healthy plants.

In the gardening blogosphere we know the many benefits of using compost to feed the soil. There are tons of sites citing personal experience with its benefits, I am included in that number and urge everyone to participate and leave the chemicals on the store shelf.

Nature has a marvelous answer to harmful pests: beneficial insects. Using chemicals to rid the bad guys also kill off the beneficials.

Most chemical pesticides are petroleum based. Another good reason to avoid them.

Other ways to ensure a healthy garden is to allow for good air circulation. Overcrowding your plants allows them to stay wet longer which makes them more susceptible to fungus and other diseases.

Using natural repellants such as sprays made out of hot peppers, coyote or bobcat urine, rotten eggs, bonemeal, or bloodmeal (even castor oil) can make your garden unappetizing to herbivores. Reapply the repellents frequently, especially after rain.

What we need to do is write to Ms. Obama to congratulate her for her level-headed thinking by not using chemicals and remind her that farmers managed to feed this nation for decades without the ‘protection’ of agrichemicals.

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Organic or not

One thing I have not yet had to deal with in any great numbers is insect pests. Sure there have been the occasional hole in a leaf or chew marks around the edges but nothing to make me want to reach for the insecticides. Not that I would without hesitation, but I just don’t know yet. I would like to believe I wouldn’t. Having not faced the prospect of losing the entire plot my resolve has not yet been tested.

Right now, weeds are my only real enemy and I have been satisfied with just pulling them by hand. I guess I haven’t gotten too tired of it yet. I have learned that just piling 3”-4” of mulch on the bed does not cut out weeds entirely. Since this is my first year at gardening in something other than a raised bed, and thick mulching is the only ‘weed control’ I have used, I have not yet been faced with the horror stories I have read about of weeds completely taking over plant beds.

My experience with growing vegetables has been in raised beds and I have very little problem with weeds there. Insects have always made their presence known but nothing too serious.

I have read books that extol the virtues of maintaining the organic way of life and I have always thought it sounded like a lot of work. Idealistically it would be great if everyone would practice it but I don’t think many people do. There are too many people today, with their busy lifestyles who have become accustomed to having instant gratification and will therefore, if they bother to garden at all, reach for a chemically based fertilizer or pesticide that guarantees quick success.

I have to admit that I have a few of these chemicals in my garden shed. When I first started flower gardening I thought it was inevitable that I would need a ‘well stocked’ chemical shelf of insecticide, herbicide and chemically based fertilizer. I have used Carbaryl on the Box Elder bugs that hang around the shed that sits underneath the drooping branches of a neighbors Box Elder tree. But I don’t have any vegetables growing in that area so I don’t feel I am doing any damage. I sprinkle it around the perimeter of the shed in an attempt to keep them out because they like to hang out inside in the heat of the day. I have cut down on their numbers, there aren’t nearly as many as there was last year. But it never completely got rid of the bothersome little buggers.

I also have to admit to using a complete herbicide when clearing a patch of ground to start a new bed a year before planting anything in it. And again, this plot is not to be used for vegetables.

As far as maintaining plots that already have plants in them, I have five plots that have flowers only in them and they are not completed yet, I fear using anything chemically based, so the chemical based fertilizer I bought remains unopened and unused. The fertilizer I do use is based entirely on animal products and naturally occurring minerals. People have suggested I use Miracle-Gro about midway through the season but after reading the books on organics and re-reading the label of ingredients on the Miracle-Gro I turned away from it. Next year will be year number two for all of these flower plots I started and I plan on spreading composted steer manure in the Spring and scratching it into the soil. So, I am trying to make a conscious effort to stay organic. I just don’t know how I will react if I am the victim of a large-scale insect attack.

I guess I have never believed in a totally idealistic way of life such as organic gardening is supposed to be. Real life and what you read about in books rarely match up. So, in order for me to go totally organic, I am going to have to be convinced it is worth the effort.

The creed of organic gardening is that if you don’t use any chemicals in your plot then nature will balance the population of bad organisms with a population of good organisms so that you will never completely lose an entire plot to voracious insects. Forgive me if I am not completely convinced yet. I am open to trying this lifestyle to see if it works, but the first time I lose an entire plot, then out come the chemicals.

But wait, there are natural pesticides available, if not to purchase then there are many recipes so you can make your own, right? Well, I have tried some of these recipes and they can be a bit messy and don’t last very long. Like I said I have not had a major problem with insects so maybe I should not try to pass judgment on their effectiveness yet.

The most common natural pest control is insecticidal soap. Another popular recipe involves the use of garlic. I have used them both as sprays and remain dubious as to their effectiveness. Other recipes use onion or mint. It seems to me that the action of just spraying insects with a strong spray in order to knock them off of the plant is enough to combat the problem they present. Another recipe I found uses tomato leaves crushed up with cornstarch in water and used as a spray. I have not tried this one yet but those leaves would have to be ground up pretty finely in order to pass through the sprayer head.

I like the idea of the botanical pesticides such as Neem, Rotenone, Pyrethrin and Sabadilla. Although I have never used these I would be willing to try them before using chemicals.

The bottom line on all of these natural pesticides is that they break down readily in the soil and are not stored in plant or animal tissue. These are big pluses for me. As much as I don’t like cats in my yard scaring away the birds, I would not want to be responsible for poisoning one. Also, I don’t want to poison the birds just to keep some plants.

None of these natural pesticides will last very long so that repeat sprayings will always be required. This is itself is a bit of a hassle but still a small price to pay for not poisoning the environment.

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Variety of Life

There has been an ongoing study related to the disappearance of honeybees through a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.

Susan of Garden Rant brought attention to this plight through her post ‘Honeybees – the Katrina of Entomology’ dated July 1, 2007. Thank-you Susan for keeping this very important issue alive.

In her post she directs us to the Washington Post garden writer Adrian Higgins article entitled ‘Saving the Earth From the Ground Up’ in which Mr. Higgins writes about a ‘bleak world without bugs’.

In this article, Mr. Higgins directs us to another of his articles covering pollinators in general in which he describes some of the many pollinators every garden needs to maintain a healthy garden.

Here is an excerpt from that article that I thought would be helpful in showing the important role that home gardeners play in attracting a wide variety of pollinators:
“As scientists seek to figure out why honeybees, brought here centuries ago by colonists, are missing in action, Laurie Davies Adams wants us to spare a thought for the other pollinators out there. Their ranks include a wide array of native bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, moths, skippers, beetles, hummingbirds and bats.

From San Francisco, Adams directs the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign, established in 1999 after a symposium at the National Zoo.

Working in a loose partnership with environmental organizations, scientists, public and corporate land managers and agricultural and horticultural groups, among others, the campaign has succeeded in getting Congress to establish June 24 to June 30 as the first National Pollinator Week.

Adams's group sees home gardeners who are concerned about pollinator decline, as vital helpers in the protection of pollinators. The campaign's Web site, http://www.pollinator.org, offers specific tips on encouraging and protecting them.

One strategy is to plant colorful and long-flowering perennials and annuals, and to group them in masses. Among the flowers in my garden that seem to draw all kinds of insect pollinators are goldenrods; any composite, including coneflowers, sunflowers and asters; the eupatoriums, including joe-pye weed, and lots of the stellar annuals now around, including improved strains of petunias and impatiens.

I'm not a huge fan of zinnias or marigolds, but they are pollinator magnets, too. Plants that are members of the carrot family produce domed flowers called umbels that seem to draw a lot of small pollinating bees and other insects. That group would include dill and angelica as well as parsley allowed to bloom. This year, I let some overwintering parsnips go to flower, and their resulting yellow umbels have drawn a lot of interesting little bees, ants and ladybird beetles.

The second important way home gardeners affect pollinators is in their use, or nonuse, of pesticides. Many products are highly toxic to bees, and if you must use them, do so in the correct concentrations and at a time of day when pollinators are not on the wing. Be careful about overspray and windy conditions, especially if your drift may harm your neighbor's garden. If you have a lawn and yard service, educate yourself about the company's sprays, methods and employee training.“

All of us should be mindful of how we use pesticides and whether the small amount of damage our plants receive warrant the use of pesticides. I just read Skippy's Vegetable Garden where Carlton shows in his post titled 'First Chili Pepper' dated July 1, 2007, he doesn’t worry too much about pests, I think this is a very commendable and responsible view of the insect world as it relates to our gardening pleasure.

I think that if there is but one overriding point to what Mr. Higgins makes in his article it’s that gardening is about variety. There should be a variety of insects and plants in every garden.

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Bees are disappearing

I found this article in the LA Times, written by Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers. dated June 10, 2007.

I have been following this story with great interest as it affects all gardeners. Here, are some excerpts from that article.

Scientists are at a loss to pinpoint the cause. The die-off in 35 states has crippled beekeepers and threatened many crops.

Scientists have discovered that the traditional cause in the decline of the number of bees is not what is happening this time. Typically, when dead bees are “autopsied” the cause of death is due to mites or amoebas. The damage caused by mites and amoebas is quite different than what is happening now.

Dennis VanEngelsdorp, the acting apiarist for the state of Pennsylvania, discovered that internal organs are swollen with debris and strangely blackened. The bees' intestinal tracts were scarred, and their rectums were abnormally full of what appeared to be partly digested pollen. Dark marks on the sting glands were telltale signs of infection. His examination of bees in November 2006 was one of the first scientific glimpses of a mysterious honeybee die-off that has launched an intense search for a cure.

The puzzling phenomenon, known as Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, has been reported in 35 states, five Canadian provinces and several European countries. The die-off has cost U.S. beekeepers about $150 million in losses and an uncertain amount for farmers scrambling to find bees to pollinate their crops.

Scientists have scoured the country, finding eerily abandoned hives in which the bees seem to have simply left their honey and broods of baby bees.

"We've never experienced bees going off and leaving brood behind," said Pennsylvania-based beekeeper Dave Hackenberg.

Researchers have picked through the abandoned hives, dissected thousands of bees, and tested for viruses, bacteria, pesticides and mites. So far, they are stumped.

According to the Apiary Inspectors of America, 24% of 384 beekeeping operations across the country lost more than 50% of their colonies from September 2006 to March 2007. Some have lost 90%.

Honeybees, scientifically known as Apis mellifera, are required to pollinate a third of the nation's food crops, including almonds, cherries, blueberries, pears, strawberries and pumpkins.

VanEngelsdorp says that Varroa and tracheal mites have occasionally wrought damage on hives since the 1980s. At the state lab in Harrisburg, Pa., VanEngelsdorp checked bee samples from Pennsylvania and Georgia. He washed bees with soapy water to dislodge Varroa mites and cut the thorax of the bees to look for tracheal mites; he found that the number of mites was not unusually high.

His next guess was amoebic infection. He scanned the bees' kidneys for cysts and found a handful, but not enough to explain the population decline.

Bee disappearances have been reported over the past hundred years or so in places such as Texas, Louisiana, California, Florida and Georgia. The reports gave no cause and reported the bee population increased shortly afterwards.

Bee specialists have been investigating the effects of pesticides and insecticides on bees. Studies have shown that pesticides can kill bees and throw off their ability to learn and navigate.

Several researchers have been sifting through bees that have been ground up, looking for viruses and bacteria and discovered a large number of pathogens that suggests the bees' immune systems had been suppressed, allowing the proliferation of infections.

One of the unusual features of the disorder is that the predators of abandoned beehives, such as hive beetles and wax moths, refuse to venture into infected hives for weeks or longer. It’s as if the affected hives have become toxic to bee predators.

In the absence of knowledge, theories have proliferated, including one that Osama bin Laden has engineered the die-off to disrupt American agriculture. This one really had me shaking my head.

One of the most pervasive theories is that cellphone transmissions are causing the disappearances — an idea that originated with a recent German study. This theory "is a complete figment of the imagination." The German physicist who conducted the tiny study "disclaimed the connection to cellphones." "What they put in the colony was a cordless phone. Whoever translated the story didn't know the difference."

Another popular theory is that the bees have been harmed by corn genetically engineered to contain the pesticide Bt. Illinois is surrounded by an ocean of Bt pollen, and the bees are not afflicted."

Please don’t spread any of these foolish notions.

I for one am trying to go towards a more organic lifestyle and have been amazed at the number of natural methods of pest and disease control available. I have tried some of them and have had mixed results. But at the same time I don't believe it is reasonable to go for a 100% kill rate when it comes to pest control. After all, beneficial insects need something to feed on. and when we use a pesticide to 'kill-off' a threat to our crops we are unintentionally killing the beneficials as well.

We can afford to loose some of our crop to pests but it is doubtful that we will loose the whole crop. Granted, we have all heard of cases where there has been a total wipe out of crops, but that has been because there was an imbalance created by man's use of pesticides that killed off every insect and then left room for a different insect or disease to come in and destroy everything.

Here is a website that has a very extensive list of organic methods that I have found useful, it is http://www.extremelygreen.com/pestcontrolguide.cfm.

This website is very helpful in identifying any pest or disease you may have if you send them a description.

There are also many other sites, just go to Google, or your favorite search engine and type in 'organic pest control'.

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Pesticide update

EPA continues the phase-out of harmful pesticides. Lindane, “recognized internationally as one of the most toxic, persistent, bio-accumulative pesticides ever registered,” according to Jim Gulliford, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, has finally been banned after over 10 years of review. It is still approved, however, by the FDA as a medicinal treatment for lice and scabies. EPA is also phasing out the carbamate, carbofuran, over a 4-year period.

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Water quality tests

Water quality was measured by USGS in streams across the country and results showed that over 90% of streams and about 50% of shallow wells near agricultural and urban areas contained pesticide residue. Lovely! From Gilliom, et. al. 2006, “The quality of our nation’s streams and ground water”, 1992-2001.

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Vanishing honeybees mystify scientists

Read this article in the Washington Post
(comments in parenthesis are mine)

Washington-Go to work, come home. Go to work, come home. Go to work -- and vanish without a trace.
Billions of bees have done just that, leaving the crop fields they are supposed to pollinate, and scientists are mystified about why.
The phenomenon was first noticed late last year in the United States, where honeybees are used to pollinate $15 billion worth of fruits, nuts and other crops annually. Disappearing bees have also been reported in Europe and Brazil.

Commercial beekeepers would set their bees near a crop field as usual and come back in two or three weeks to find the hives bereft of foraging worker bees, with only the queen and the immature insects remaining. Whatever worker bees survived were often too weak to perform their tasks.
(The general public only cares when it begins to affect their pocketbook).

If the bees were dying of pesticide poisoning or freezing, their bodies would be expected to lie around the hive. And if they were absconding because of some threat -- which they have been known to do -- they wouldn't leave without the queen.
Since about one-third of the U.S. diet depends on pollination and most of that is performed by honeybees, this constitutes a serious problem, according to Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Agricultural Research Service.

"They're the heavy lifters of agriculture," Pettis said of honeybees. "And the reason they are is they're so mobile and we can rear them in large numbers and move them to a crop when it's blooming."

Honeybees are used to pollinate some of the tastiest parts of the American diet, Pettis said, including cherries, blueberries, apples, almonds, asparagus and macadamia nuts.
(I heard last summer that a mite was causing the declining population).

Pettis and other experts are gathering outside Washington for a two-day workshop starting on Monday to pool their knowledge and come up with a plan of action to combat what they call colony collapse disorder.

In some cases, beekeepers are losing 50 percent of their bees to the disorder, with some suffering even higher losses. One beekeeper alone lost 40,000 bees, Pettis said. Nationally, some 27 states have reported the disorder, with billions of bees simply gone.
Some beekeepers supplement their stocks with bees imported from Australia, said beekeeper Jeff Anderson, whose business keeps him and his bees traveling between Minnesota and California. Honeybee hives are rented out to growers to pollinate their crops, and beekeepers move around as the growing seasons change.

Honeybees are not the only pollinators whose numbers are dropping. Other animals that do this essential job -- non-honeybees, wasps, flies, beetles, birds and bats -- have decreasing populations as well. But honeybees are the big actors in commercial pollination efforts.
"One reason we're in this situation is this is a supersize society -- we tend to equate small with insignificant," Berenbaum said. "I'm sorry but that's not true in biology. You have to be small to get into the flower and deliver the pollen.

"Without that critical act, there's no fruit. And no technology has been invented that equals, much less surpasses, insect pollinators."
(Please, don’t use insecticides when honeybees are around. They are having trouble enough already.)

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