Garlic/Pepper Tea

[creister]

Has anyone else used this on a regular basis for pest control? I use it quite a bit, for mites. It seems to work quite well. If you do use it, how has it performed for you?

Curt

[biodarwin]

I have never made this but I am very interested. I did try the use of garlic powder around my pepper plants and it did have some effect on reducing aphids.

[creister]

To make this, put two bulbs of garlic, two jalepeno or habanero peppers into a blender. Add water until it is about half full with water. Blend. Pour liquid into a gallon container and fill it up with water. Use at 2 oz. per gallon as a spray. I also spray it around the house to help keep outside bugs out.

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by creister

To make this, put two bulbs of garlic, two jalepeno or habanero peppers into a blender. Add water until it is about half full with water. Blend. Pour liquid into a gallon container and fill it up with water. Use at 2 oz. per gallon as a spray. I also spray it around the house to help keep outside bugs out.

I have done about the same, except I filter it and add Bt before adding to the sprayer. Seems to help prevent clogging the sprayer and also helps prevent caterpillar damage at the same time.

[creister]

Originally Posted by Redbaron

I have done about the same, except I filter it and add Bt before adding to the sprayer. Seems to help prevent clogging the sprayer and also helps prevent caterpillar damage at the same time.

Definitely strain out the solids from the blender. I even strain it again when putting it into the sprayer.

[Tania]

Сurt,

We used that a few years back. It works on direct contact.

But it also kills many beneficial insects, so we stopped using it.

Now our garden is filled with many beneficials - lacewing, parasitic wasps, aphidoletes, hoveflies. They take care of aphids and mites and other bad insects.

I will never spray anything, even organic, again. I want my beneficial insects to reproduce in the garden and take care of the pests. It seems to work very well this year, but be warned that if you want to go this way, it may take an year or two to restore the natural balance, and pests can be abundant in the first year.

Good luck!

Tatiana

[RootLoops]

i let a little puddle sized pond i dug stay wet and got a ton of frogs out of it. i noticed tadpoles in there one day so i made sure the water didn't run out and i fed them table scraps of lettuce, watermelon, tomatoes, banana peels, etc. i fed and watered them for a few weeks and now i have tiny frogs all over the place. they are in every corner of the garden, i have to look down everywhere i walk to make sure i'm not stepping on any. sorry for the tangent, but the talk of beneficials gave me an in to share my surprise frog pond story

the spray i use is: BT, molasses, dish soap, garlic and pepper juice, and sometimes neem.

[yardn_gardn]

I bet the polliwogs loved those tomatoes.

[RootLoops]

they did! they would all jump on it and push it around the pond like a little tadpole powered raft! this reminds me i need to go feed the new batch some watermelon leftovers

[matilda'skid]

I believe in beneficial insects but when I get a plague of striped blister beetles, I have to spray or they eat all the leaves off anything in their path. Don't you ever have a bug that has to be stopped or you have no garden?

[Tania]

In nature, any problem has a solution.

In monoculture gardens there is no balance, hence pests can be abundant.

We do our best to interplant.

In the last 3 years we are fortunate not to have any bugs that destroy our entire crop. Not that we had these situations in the previous 10 years we gardened in Pacific North West.

When we gardened in Russia, Colorado beetles were abundant and they would destroy your entire potato crop, if not controlled. Controlling them did not mean spraying with toxins. It meant picking larvae manually in the field before they destroy our potatoes. It also meant letting our chickens into the field to take care of the beetles.

Tatiana

[RootLoops]

i really need to get some chickens, a friend of mine has started to breed them maybe soon i can get a few to let out in the yard. the only reason i don't have any now is because we live adjacent to my mother in law who has around 10 dogs, most that live outside where chickens would be housed

[Tracydr]

The chickens will eat the garden. Try Gunieas, which like little bugs such as ticks and grasshoppers. Ducks are also much less damaging and helpful.

[Dewayne mater]

Tatiana - I've read with interest your posts here and elsewhere about no spraying. Just to be clear, you also don't spray something that is supposed to be entirely beneficial, such as seaweed extract?

I want to believe and I adore the concept of not spraying things that could have any toxicity at all on food my family eats. But, I (and other southern hot weather gardeners) have red spider mites that become extremely abundant in a short time period and having lost every crop to them for the first several years of gardening when the weather gets hot (100 plus daily) and then not losing crops to them after beginning to treat them with various sprays, I just don't see how to avoid spraying, unless I am willing to lose all of my tomatoes every July. Tough call for me.

Dewayne Mater

[Tania]

Hi Dewayne,

I am not against spraying something beneficial and not toxic, I think it is OK and can do lots of good in many gardens. As long it does not kill other beneficials or does any other harm to the nature.

We do not spray the goodies either, because

a) it is lots of work
b) our garden is abundant without it (except the years when we get a horrid late blight outbreak early in summer - but in this case no amount of spraying would work anyway! Everybody around would lose tomatoes, no matter what they do. But even in these years we learned how to make sure we still get a few fruits to eat, and keep our potatoes )

Tatiana