Whether you are concerned about your plants, your kids, or your pets, it is important to use organic insect repellent. You can make an insect repellent with garlic and vinegar. It can be completely homemade and organic, which is good for everything involved. Earth Easy, an online site devoted to natural insect control, lists vinegar and garlic as two main ingredients to fighting bugs.
Organic Ingredients
Video of the Day
Buy cloves of organic garlic, and buy a bottle of organic vinegar. The packaging should tell you that both the garlic and vinegar is organic. Your insect repellent won't be organic if the ingredients aren't. If the garlic and vinegar is not organic, it might contain trace elements of chemicals or substances that could be harmful.
Video of the Day
Water Base
Make your insect repellent with a water base. Pure vinegar can be too strong to use on anything other than plants, so if you are going to spray it on yourself or your children or pets, you'll want to water it down. A good recipe for a watered down insect repellent for you, your family, pets, or surfaces where you'll be spending time is 5 parts distilled water, 5 parts vinegar, and 2 whole garlic cloves, which have been mashed up.
Straight
Jack Jones; a plant specialist with Parkview Nursery in Aberdeen South Dakota, for 20 years says you can make a straight vinegar and garlic insect repellent to use on your plants. This will keep bugs off of your plants, and will keep bugs from hovering in areas where you have lots of plants. Simply put two cloves of garlic in about 12 oz. of water and mix it up. Use a spray bottle to apply the insect repellent to your plants and let it dry completely. Earth Easy lists garlic and vinegar as repellents for ants, mosquitoes, and fleas, so Jones agrees that a mixture will repel these pests, and will probably help repel others.