If you have some plants in your house, surely on some occasion you had a battle with an insect that began to attack them. Most likely, to solve this problem you have chosen to go buy some pesticide at the nursery. Surely you managed to kill all the insects that attacked your plants, but at what cost?
The most common pesticides on the market have a large number of chemicals in their formulas, which are toxic to insects but also to you. On the other hand, you should also keep in mind that by applying these insecticides you will not only kill the pest, but you will also be killing other insects, and some of them can be beneficial. So the balance of the environment is broken, something that can end up being even more harmful than the plague itself.
If you want to combat pests in your garden in a more natural way, without resorting to chemical insecticides, in this post I will leave you with the most useful and easy to carry out homemade pesticides.
1. Garlic-based spray
The characteristics of garlic make it a very good repellent for various types of insects, a couple of days ago I used it in my garden to combat armyworms. In a very simple way you can prepare a garlic-based spray, you just have to crush a head of garlic in the blender, along with two glasses of water until you get a homogeneous mixture.
Once the grinding is done, you must let it rest for 24 hours and then dissolve it in 3 liters of water. And that’s it, you can place it in a container with a spray bottle and vaporize this solution on the plants. You will see how the insects will begin to avoid these plants.
2. Tomato based repellent
Tomato leaves are rich in alkaloids, an excellent repellent for aphids, worms and caterpillars. You can prepare an insecticide that will work as an insect repellant by carrying out the following recipe.
Fill two cups with chopped tomato leaves and add water. Let stand at least one night and dilute the mixture in two glasses of water. Once this is done, you can start using it on your plants. Please note that you should keep this away from pets because it can be toxic to them.
3. Homemade insecticides with tobacco
Another plant from which a very effective homemade insecticide can be made is tobacco. It will be useful to fight insects thanks to the nicotine in the leaves, which is toxic to many insects. Follow these steps to prepare the tobacco-based insecticide:
– Stores several cigarette butts. – When you have about 10 or 15 butts put them to soak in half a liter of water. – Let the mixture rest in a container for two days. – Filter the mixture by passing it through a fine sieve. – Place in the diffuser and apply.
4. Homemade insecticides with milk
Due to the lactic acid that milk contains, it can be used to prepare a very good insecticide to combat mites and as a fungicidal method. Also at the same time the mineral salts will enrich the soil. The steps to follow to prepare this insecticide are as follows:
– Mix ½ cup of buttermilk with 12-13 liters of water. – Mix with 3 ½ cups of wheat flour. – Put it in the diffuser and apply it to the plants in the form of a spray.
5. Repellent made with lavender
If you are having problems with ants in your garden, lavender is a plant with which you can prepare a very good repellent for these annoying insects. You just have to make an infusion with 300 grams of fresh lavender leaves with 1 liter of water. Let cool and spray on affected plants.
6. Vegetable oil-based insecticide
Undoubtedly, aphids, mealybugs, mites or caterpillars are four of the most annoying and damaging insects in any garden. Let’s see how to prepare an insecticide based on vegetable oil to combat them naturally.
You must mix 2 cups of vegetable oil with half a cup of pure liquid soap, shake until a white mixture remains, dilute it in water and spray it with a spray. It is best to apply it in the morning or in the afternoon when the sun’s rays are less intense, as long as the temperature does not exceed 30 °C. This will make the insecticide more effective.
7. Egg shell repellent
To end this list of homemade insecticides, I leave you one to make based on eggshells. I have left it for last because it is undoubtedly the easiest of all to prepare.
You just have to crush the egg shells very well and apply this powder at the base of the plants. This will work great for repelling snails, slugs, and some caterpillars. At the same time it will work as a very good fertilizer.
I hope you can get useful information from this post and that in this way you can combat many of the garden pests in an ecological and economic way. 😉
