Q,
If you were to buy one product for insect control on plants, what would it be?
 |
| Organic castile soap for mixing in an emergency. What you shoot, is what you get when using soap and water sprays! |
 |
| Probably the single most important insecticide all season but it is applied in the winter as a precaution. Insurance insecticide. |
A.
Probably soap and water sprays or an oil but not a Neem-type oil. Soap and
water sprays are deadly to all insects whether the insect killed is a good guy
or a bad guy. With soap and water sprays “what you spray is what you will kill”.
Be careful when you use soap sprays and spray only what you intend to kill. In
many ways it’s like a gun.
The advantage of industrialized
pesticides is that they stick around longer after you spray them. Soap and
water sprays must be repeated more frequently to protect plants from undesirable
insects but are perceived as more environmentally friendly. I always carry with
me a bottle of soap for mixing with water in case I see an insect problem that
needs my immediate attention.
In a pinch you can make your own
soap spray by adding about one to two tablespoons of dishwashing soap to a gallon of
water. I prefer using a pure Castile soap, that I am comfortable about, to mix
with water.
The oils I’m talking about are the “horticultural
oils” or “dormant oils” made from paraffin or mineral oil and not from the Neem
plant. These types of oils have been proven to be very effective on soft bodied
insects like scale, aphids, mites, and whiteflies. Follow the label directions when
making an application. Don’t add soap to the concoction if it is already “homogenized” and has something in it that already mixes the oil and water together.
.JPG) |
| Horticultural oils (don’t use Neem oil) comes in smaller and larger quantities. |