What Is a Good Organic Pesticide?
People are becoming more aware of the dangers associated with pesticides in food as well as in our soil and water. You can choose organic produce at the supermarket, but in our own gardens we're left to fend for ourselves. When fungus and voracious bugs attack, here's how to fight back and keep you, and your garden, healthy. Does this Spark an idea?
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Organic Does Not Automatically Mean "Safe"
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The organic label on pesticides does not necessarily mean "harmless to all other lifeforms, safe to use indiscriminately." When you get down to it, everything on earth comes from an organic source and that includes chemicals. Also, plants had been defending themselves against pests and other nasty things who want to eat them for countless millennia before we came along. So it makes sense that many commercial pesticides are derived from concentrated amounts of the same stuff plants produce to ward off attackers. Pyrethrins, for example, are derived from chrysanthemums. Popular brand-name pesticides like Raid, for example, are composed mostly of pyrethrins.
Know Thy Enemy
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Clarify whether you really need a pesticide or an herbicide. People tend to use the word "pesticide" to include both. But in both cases, natural remedies are the best long-term solution to the problem. If the problem is weeds, what you really need are other, desirable plants that can out-compete the weeds in any given area. Whether it's groundcover, perennial flowers, a vegetable bed or shrubbery, a thriving plant community will defend itself against intruders better than any synthetic solution.
The same goes for dealing with pests, be they microscopic or huge and many-legged. Start with the least harmful, most beneficial remedy first and if that doesn't work, move on to stronger measures. In this case, that means planting things around your fruits and vegetables that will confuse pestiferous bugs by scent, and sometimes sight. Plant plenty of dill and fennel around your veggie rows, and you'll create an almost impenetrable hedgerow of scents that will confuse even the canniest of predators. As an added bonus, you'll have more of these herbs than you know what to do with, even if you're a gourmet chef who cans and gives out homegrown garden treats for holiday gifts. Some pests do fancy dill and fennel and will hang around for awhile munching on them--but better that then utter decimation of your lettuce and carrots.
Plant marigolds around your tomatoes and garlic around your roses and other flowering shrubs; their scents will have the same effect.
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Taking it to the Next Level
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If you've done all this and still have bugs, move on to the next step: homemade spray solutions. A homemade spray of ground cayenne pepper (the hottest you can find), a tiny bit of dish soap (to make the solution "sticky"), and water, not only kills some pests on contact but repels them for quite a few days. You can also mix tobacco with water and a little soap for a natural pesticide spray. This makes intuitive sense, as tobacco's ancestor plant, the lovely and talented Nicotiana, is another good one to plant around vegetables in order to confuse bugs with scent.
When Your Goal is Annihilation
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If the preventative, defensive remedies aren't working or you already have a serious infestation to deal with, only then should you open up that can of pyrethrin-based pesticide. The reason being, these pesticides also kill honeybees and other beneficial pollinators. Our pollinators are dying off at an alarming rate, which places our food supply in danger. Normally Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) would be an acceptable remedy, but certain strains can kill butterfly larvae, and since butterflies are also pollinators, we need every single one of them.
Earth-Friendly Equals Wallet-Friendly
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Horticultural oil, or orange-based oil, is also highly effective at killing bugs almost on contact and leaves no harmful residues for pets, children or other wildlife to accidentally ingest. However, a truly affordable horticultural oil that does the job is hard to find. Keep in mind that the bigger "guns" you use to fight these pests, the more expensive it gets; luckily, the most earth-friendly solutions are also the cheapest.
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