owl: D.I.Y. Non-chemical Pest Controller

[David]

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D.I.Y Nonchemical Pest Spray
« Thread Started on Aug 8, 2007, 2:28am » As much as I like gardening, there's one thing I cannot bear/tolerate with, which is PEST in my plants!! They're such a pain in the a**, no matter what you do sometimes you just can't get rid all of them! They just like to gather around & have party in your little yard!!!

So I was searching internet madly & desperately for some hope to fight those tiny evil, and I found some natural ways to get rid of it besides using insecticide/pesticide. All you have to do is a little bit of DIY & in the same time won't/less harm your health & the environment.

Before you proceed, please read the warnings below…

WARNING:
1) Always perform a test on a small portion of the plant material first. Wait 24 hours to observe any negative reaction. Proceed if there is no damage.

2) More is not better. If you are not getting good results don't increase the strength of these remedies without testing first.

3) Target just the area you need to treat. When using a spray, remember it can kill beneficial bugs as well as pests, so spray only when you are sure the pests are present.

1. Natural Pest Repellent
Keep slugs and aphids away from window boxes with a homemade, nonchemical pest spray.

Place one peeled onion, two peeled garlic cloves, and one teaspoon cayenne pepper in the jar of a blender. Add three cups of water, and blend until smooth. Let the mixture sit overnight, strain the liquid into a spray bottle, and coat plants generously. The solution will keep, refrigerated in the bottle, for up to one week.


2. All-Natural Repellent
Turn away pesky ants for days on end with this nontoxic repellent.

Pour equal amounts of water and white vinegar into a spray bottle, and shake to mix. Then spritz the solution in water-resistant areas where ants are common, such as kitchen floors or the crevices in painted baseboards from which the pests often enter. You can also use the repellent outside.


3. Alcohol sprays (Warning: May cause leaf damage.)
Alcohol sprays work on mealy bugs & have been used successfully on houseplants and tropical foliage plants. Most of these have heavy, waxy cuticles that are not easily burned.

Mix 1 to 2 cups alcohol [Use only 70% isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol] per quart of water (1 quart=4 cups) into a sprayer. Using undiluted alcohol as a spray is very risky for plants.

Since alcohol can damage plants always test your spray mix on a few leaves of plants first. If the spray kills the pests and no leaf damage shows within the next 2 or 3 days, go ahead and spray further, using exactly the same ingredients and proportions you tested. If an infestation is well-established, it will be necessary to make a series of applications, at 10 to 14 day intervals, for mealy bug control.

You can also use cotton dip into the solution & touch each bug individually if you scared damage the leaves. Although it's time consuming, but reliable.


4. Basic Soap Spray
Most effective on soft bodied insects; mites, aphids, whiteflies, thrips,
Soap penetrates the cell membrane and causes the pest to dry out. Very little residue.

Two tablespoons of biodegradable dishwashing liquid mix with 1 gallon of warm water (1 US gallon=16 US cups) and use as a spray. Repeat as necessary.


5. Predator - Ladybugs
Besides using the above non-chemical control, for fighting the nasty aphids, you can use a little help from ladybug/ladybird (whichever you called it), they loves aphids, the female lay eggs near the prey, to increase the likelihood the larvae will find the prey easily. How smart! But be careful if put ladybug on carnivorous plant or it may end up to be the plant's dinner, I certainly hope not, ladybug is a beneficial insect. So if you ever catch one, don't 'feed' it to any of your carnivorous plants, they do not harm your plant.

Personally speaking, I had tried the first method, um.., it works ok, but has to spray consistently because it is natural, it won't stay long. But it is economical & harmless to you (that's what most important as chemical pesticide is no joke, do no good to your health if you inhale/& get contact with it.Unless you wear a mask & gloves, which I doubt most people will bother to wear it.)

Also another very important factor, natural repellent does no harm the environment.

But I'd say ladybug is the most effective one to kill aphids, as they eat and eat non stop, I once placed it under the leaf full with aphids, it eats those nasty aphids right away. Within a second, the aphid under that leaf is gone. However, that ladybug I caught might get eaten by lizard, ‘cause I can't find it anymore, is the only ladybug I caught, so sad. I only saw that lizard hiding behind the plant, (it still hiding happily everyday). Or May be that ladybug flew away, don't like my yard I guess.

I hope this little information helps; and also hope this helps you less dependent on chemical pesticide.


~ Love our green earth. ~


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Re: D.I.Y Nonchemical Pest Spray
« Reply #1 on Aug 8, 2007, 3:29pm » Thanks for this information. Will archive it.
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[arvin555]

really really old post, but will revive to share my recent experience, I have a small aphid problem with my drosera flowers, sure they look cute, golden aphids. But was concerned that the flowers might suffer from them. Did a short search and found this topic.

I then also read another post about the soap actually getting absorbed and dehydrating the insects.

Because I know from experience that ****roaches can stay underwater for some time, but die quickly if soap suds is thrown over it, specially on the head. I then used the above mentioned system, but simplified.

1. one drop of dishwashing liquid soap.
2. 10ml of tap water.
3. Mix both together in a container until you get soap suds/foam.
4. I then used a toothpick to pick up the foam/suds and applied on the stalks and stems where aphids are. Because I use foam, I think that I am not putting too much soap on the plant anyway.
5. Waited a few minutes, checked and saw no movement, I tried picking off some of the aphids, looked dead.
6. Got some fresh tap water, rinsed off the parts which I used soap on, as mentioned most of them are flowerstalks so easy to just dip them in the water to "rinse" the soap what little there is.

Will report again if the aphids bounces back in a few days or not.

TTFN
Arvin

[arvin555]

When it rains it pours! I just found today that one of my ventricosas has a bad infection of root mealybugs, It was lucky that for some reason the plant got slighty uprooted and I saw the white stuff. I tried plucking out the old potting mix (cocopeat) but there are still a lot along with the roots. So I thought what the hey, try the soap again, a drop of dishwashin soap in about 100ml of water, soaked the roots in there and started shaking. I don't think I took out most of the white stuff but hopefully I killed off the bugs themselves. Left the plant in new cocopeat and the pot in a water dish to make sure the plant won't dehydrate from what I did.

Got me thinking, Neps can usually take being underwater for some time, maybe one can soak the whole pot in water to drown out all the bugs, maybe 1 or 2 hours. Any comments?

TTFN
Arvin

[adrian]

Wouldnt the soap have any effect on the neps but could kill the white bugs? I have quite a fair bit of this bugs around, and need to kill them, without those chemical stuff.

[arvin555]

An update on my dish washing soap experiment:

1. Remember I used them on flower stalk so not really dangerous for rest of plant, most aphids died, only few left which was easy to pick off.

2. Saw my Capensis with some aphids on the leaves, I put 3 whole plants with pot and everything in very deep water container and dunk the whole pot in, so the plant is underwater, left for 30 minutes. Can't find any trace of aphids anymore.

3. Used soap suds on leaves of Chili pepper plant with mealybugs under leaves, as of now can't be sure but I think did quite a lot of good.

My conclusion, if you are comfortable dunking whole plant under water, try this technique, I actually think this is more gentle to plant than soap, but that is just me.

TTFN
Arvin

[arvin555]

Again an update,

I just got a tip from my brother that Chilli plants are prone to having Mealyworms, which I can confirm because among our plants the chilli plants have the most mealybugs in them, might transfer all chili plants out of area where our CPs are.

I just found a flowerstalk of a D. Spatulata with lots of aphids, so I did the soap sud thing again, next day no more aphids, at least on the flower stalk. So it does work, the question is if the flowers will still bloom or not.

Again in my opinion for Neps that do not mind getting soaked underwater, soak them for a few hours and you get rid of most of the bugs, mealybugs float though.

Update:
A few days ago, saw a new flower stalk with aphids again, so used soap method and sure enough they all were gone. However today when I checked, some flower stalks have aphids again (but not the ones that I treated before, though it could get infect again as I don't think there is long term prevention capability of the soapsud method).

The flower stalks which I treated with soapsuds for aphids do continue on to flower, so it is safe to use the soapsuds on them. Though if they are able to give viable seeds not sure yet.