How to Make Insect Repellent Spray

There is nothing worse that trying to maintain a nice garden and constantly having to deal with insects destroying your plants. After a while, it can seem like a war you can't win.If you shudder every time you bring strong chemicals home to treat your plants, only to find that they don't work for long, there's another solution. Instead of exposing your family to all those chemical compounds that you can't even pronounce, try a more natural approach. A concentrated cocktail of strong smelling natural ingredients can discourage many garden insects like ants, aphids, mealy bugs, caterpillars, moths, beetles and mosquitoes.Plants in nature develop their own defenses against insects, and some of them can be very powerful. Your peonies may be under siege from aphids, but that doesn't mean that another plant, one that aphids hate, might not take care of the problem. You don't need a shelf full of bottles sporting a skull and crossbones to have healthy, pest free plants. Use nature to fight bugs with an all-natural bug-repellent spray.

Things You'll Need

• Plastic spray bottle
• 2 tbs. Cayenne pepper
• 5 drops Peppermint oil
• 2 tbs. Liquid dish soap
• 8 cloves Garlic
• 1 Yellow onion
• 1 qt. Water
• Blender
• Muslin or a fine strainer
• Container with tight fitting lid

Instructions

Preparing Insect Repellent Spray

1. Blend garlic cloves and onion to a paste. Strain the paste into a container using a length of muslin or a mesh strainer. Discard the pulp.

2. Add 1 qt. of water to the container and stir. Add 2 tbsp. of cayenne pepper and 5 drops of peppermint oil to the liquid mixture. Allow the mixture to stand for at least 4 hours.

3. Add 2 tbsp. of dish soap to the mixture and stir or shake to incorporate. Fill a plastic spray bottle with the mixture.

4. Refrigerate the remaining mixture and use it as needed to refill the sprayer.

Using Insect Repellent Spray

1. Spray plants early in the morning. Saturate the undersides of leaves as well as the tops and stems.

2. Spray the bases of plants and around the pots of container plants. Pay particular attention to areas where there is dense foliage.

3. After 24 hours, respray the areas where you noticed the most insect activity.

Tips & Warnings

• Respray plants after each rain if insect activity is present.

• Spray once a week during the spring and summer months when insect activity is high.

• Make two batches of the mixture at a time and freeze half.

• Start spraying early in spring. Some varieties of insects will pay less attention to your plants if you discourage them early in the season.

• Avoid spraying on days when you think it might rain.

• Peppermint oil is effective in controlling ants, aphids and mosquitoes. It can harm delicate plant leaves, however, when sprayed in high concentrations. The concentration of peppermint oil in this natural insect repellent spray is pretty low, but to be on the safe side, spray a test patch in your garden to make sure that plants will not have an adverse reaction to the oil.