How to Make and Use Organic Pesticide From Tobacco
Tobacco plants contain nicotine, not to please human smokers but to deter pests. Nicotine is toxic to some herbivorous pests, and you can make use of this quality in a homemade organic pesticide. Tobacco pesticide is particularly effective on soft creatures, such as slugs and aphids. Any tobacco forms the basis of the spray, including rolling tobacco, pipe tobacco, chewing tobacco and cigarette butts. If growing your own tobacco is not regulated in your area, drying home-grown leaves for the spray is an option. Does this Spark an idea?
Things You'll Need
- Tobacco
- Bucket
- Sieve
- Dish washing liquid
- Storage containers
- Plant mister
Instructions
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Steep a cup of dry tobacco in a gallon of water for at least half an hour. Soaking for longer produces a stronger pesticide, and some gardeners leave the tobacco mixture to soak for a day. Stronger pesticides might work faster, but they are also more dangerous to beneficial garden insects.
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Add a squirt of dish washing liquid to the mixture. This improves the spreadability of the pesticide and is mildly toxic to some pests in its own right.
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Strain the liquid into plastic storage containers, through a fine sieve, to remove the tobacco pieces. Tighten the lids securely. The pesticide will keep for a couple of weeks if stored somewhere cool, for example, in a garage or basement.
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Transfer the mixture to a plant mister.
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Target the pests and use as little spray as possible. For example, spray growing shoots that are thickly covered in aphids but not nearby, aphid-free leaves. Tobacco spray is natural but still dangerous to useful insects, such as ladybugs.
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Tips & Warnings
Adding dishwashing soap helps the solution stick to the plant surfaces, and it also has pest killing properties of its own.
Do not use a tobacco pesticide on plants in the tobacco family, Solanaceae. These include tomato, potato and pepper plants. Tobacco may carry the tobacco mosaic virus that could be much more of a problem than the pests.
References
- Photo Credit Tom Brakefield/Stockbyte/Getty Images
