- in Gardening by Alexis Rodrigo
Home-made Natural Garden Sprays That Keep Pests at Bay
Have you been wanting to use a more natural type of pest control in your garden? You can make your own natural garden sprays to control pests, and the ingredients are not expensive. In fact, you probably have a lot of these items already in your home or growing in your garden.
Here are some recipes for repelling the pests from your yard and garden.
Note: Some of the recipes call for liquid soap. This refers to vegetable-based soap such as castile or oil soap (such as is used for cleaning wood and floors). Using dish or laundry detergent can harm plants.
1. Hot Chili Pepper Spray
This is reputed to kill caterpillars. In a blender, whiz 2 cups of fresh chili peppers or 1 cup dried with 2 cups of water until it is liquefied. Use this spray right away, and keep it out of your eyes.
2. Hot Chili Pepper and Wormwood Spray
This is a spray that can help repel larger pests such as opossums and rabbits, in addition to snails and slugs. It kills white flies and aphids (be sure to spray under the leaves for aphids). Begin as with the chili spray above, but add one cup of chopped wormwood herb before blending (you may need some additional water to blend it into a liquid). Then, add 5 cups of water, boil, and steep for an hour. Strain before spraying. Keep this spray from contacting your eyes and skin.
3. Garlic Sprays
There are multiple garlic-based sprays that repel or kill a variety of pests. Garlic is said to be especially effective against ants, cabbage worms, and caterpillars, but it works as a repellent for a wide variety of pests.
* Basic garlic spray: Steep 4 raw garlic cloves in a quart of water for about 3 days. Then liquefy the mixture in a blender.
* Garlic soap spray: Steep 4 cloves of garlic as above, then add 2 tablespoons of liquid soap before blending.
* Garlic hot pepper spray: Add 3-4 chili peppers to the mixture before blending.
* Garlic, hot pepper, and onion spray: Try this concentrated spray for red spider mites or aphids. Chop a head of garlic and a medium onion (no need to peel first). Add chopped garlic and onion to 5-6 cups of water and stir in a tablespoon of cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 20 minutes.
When the mixture has cooled, let it sit in a glass jar for a month to six weeks. Then, strain and add 1 tablespoon of this formula (plus an optional tablespoon of liquid soap) to 1 quart of water to make a spray. Keep this out of your eyes and off your skin.
* Garlic oil spray: To kill aphids, onion flies, and mosquitoes, chop the bulbs of 3 to 4 heads of garlic. Steep in 2 tablespoons of mineral oil for about 24 hours. Then mix 1 teaspoon of fish emulsion with 2 cups of water and stir until dissolved. Add the fish emulsion mixture to the garlic and mineral oil. Strain and store in a glass container (not metal). This is also concentrated, so use 1 tablespoon per 1 1/4 cups of water.
4. Basic Soap Spray
Gently (so that it doesn’t foam) mix 1 tablespoon of liquid vegetable soap with 1 quart of water.
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