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Natural Insecticide and the Third World

9:11 am by webmann in backyard gardening, garden pests

People in the US have been using natural insecticide for years. Some are becoming more concerned about the environment and the safety of the food supply. Many of these have switched back to natural insecticide. So, how much is natural insecticide being used around the world?

Growers in the Philippines have been troubled by the health hazards caused by using synthetic chemical insecticides. Their producers are becoming ill with chronic health problems. Their consumers end up with produce that contains chemical residues. They are interested in natural insecticide. Thailand is another country whose government and citizens are concerned with the chemical residues on agricultural produce. Many in Asian countries feel the same way. Their middle-class is growing. This gives them more options, one of which is choosing natural insecticide.

In many African and other economically disadvantaged regions, this is not the story. Natural insecticide is not an option. Chemical insecticides that have been banned, such as methyl bromide, have shown up in ports of these countries.

Methyl bromide was banned because it was harmful to the people eating the produce. It was also bad for the ozone layer. This chemical is just bad news all around. Now it is being dumped into developing countries because it can’t be sold elsewhere. The people in these countries will take these chemical insecticides because they can’t afford natural insecticide. For that matter, they can’t afford any other insecticides.

DDT is another chemical insecticide that has been banned for years in the more developed countries of the world. It is used abundantly in Third World countries in South America and Africa. These countries might be more apt to use natural insecticide if it was as cheap and plentiful as the more hazardous chemical varieties. Unfortunately, it is not.

Many countries are producers of natural insecticide; yet do not use them in their own countries. India, for example is one of the chief growers of the neem tree. Products from the neem tree have long been used as natural insecticide. However, India has fallen prey to the cheap and easy availability of chemical insecticides. Its natural insecticide is saved for countries who can afford it. It may help their financial bottom line, but it is doing damage to their citizens’ health in the meantime.

Many countries around the world are suppliers of natural insecticides. Pyrethrum is a natural insecticide that can be used on fruits and vegetables. It is made from a specific species of chrysanthemum. These are imported mainly from Kenya and Ecuador. Rotenone is another botanical natural insecticide. It can be used for aphids, beetles and caterpillars on plants. It is made from derris plant roots which originate in Asia. It can also be extracted from cube plants which are indigenous to South America.

It seems that the nations in the Third World give more than they take when it comes to natural insecticide. It may be financially advantageous for them to use chemical insecticides in the short run. However, in terms of the cost of ill health among their people, they will be paying much more.

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Jobs That Thrive Because of Natural Insecticides

9:18 am by webmann in backyard gardening, garden pests

Have you ever thought of the results of your actions? If you’ve gotten into an analytical, philosophical, or educational frame of mind, you may have considered the many aspects of using natural insecticides.

You could say, “Big deal, so they help nature. How does that benefit me?” Well, it’s like a domino effect. You line them carefully in a row, touch one, and that one touches another and so on. Life is that way when it comes to nature. Your choices about everything in life can have a domino effect in many ways.

So, who benefits from natural insecticides? Other insects can benefit if you use them wisely. The beneficial insects would thrive without the pesky insect predators, which means that your garden benefits. That, in turn, helps you get more usable vegetables, herbs, and fruits. This benefits your family. Using the natural resources of the natural insecticides benefits our eco-system and our economy, which also benefits your family.

Other ways the use of natural insecticides can benefit your family is through the different jobs provided. Growth of things that produce natural insecticides can provide an income. There are jobs that study natural insecticides like scientific jobs, entomologists, chemists, teachers and instructors.

People get jobs in warehouses connected to the plant farms that grow ingredients for natural insecticides. Plant nurseries offer jobs as a result of the use of natural insecticides. If their nurseries thrive because of the use of the insecticides, it means sales increase, which means more employees are needed.

People who write books, articles, newspaper stories, farm reports, and newsletters benefit from natural insecticides. Health stores that sell herbs can benefit from natural insecticides since herbs can be used to create them. Grocery stores benefit from the sales of those herbs, which helps ensure the job of the person put in charge of their care. People involved in importing goods benefit from natural insecticides. Jobs that are connected to their shipping and sales, driving the transport vehicles, and so on, are some of the benefits of natural insecticides. Those who study nature, insects, plants, chemicals, animal health, and medicine to counteract the harmful effects of those used unwisely benefit from natural insecticides.

The jobs created are sometimes a direct result and sometimes an indirect result. But the fact exists that a positive impact is created in so many ways, and it is hard to pinpoint them all. One action, one person, one positive choice can make a difference. Sometimes it is a big difference all at once, and sometimes it is a difference that must be seen as a result of several things combined.

Sure there is a downside to using natural insecticides. There’s a downside to eating too much ice cream, too, but if you get sick once from it you can learn to be more cautious in the future. Sometimes it’s a matter of learning from experience; sometimes it’s a matter of gathering useful information before you make a mistake. But everything has a positive side and a negative side, and so does the use of natural insecticide. Education, awareness, and research… that’s the key to a positive future in this field.

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Making Your Own Natural Insecticides

8:28 am by webmann in backyard gardening, garden pests

Have you decided to go all natural? All natural diet, all natural pet food, all natural medicines, natural insect control, and all natural gardening have become the wave of the present and future. Many people think something is new just because it hasn’t been in the spotlight. But natural alternatives have been around for years. They just didn’t receive their kudos because of the convenience people prefer from leading busy lives. Most have found, though, that convenience can be damaging to our environment.

Convenience has hurt our rivers and roadsides because of packaging being tossed away carelessly. Convenience has hurt our family time because of lost time preparing food, eating at the family dinner table, and gardening together. Convenience has hurt our ozone layer. This doesn’t mean convenience is bad; it is what you make it. If you allow anything to take over your life it can turn into a negative.

Natural insecticides take a little more effort to use if you make them yourself. They take a little more time because they can require multiple uses and degrade quicker. But the rewards you reap from preparing your own natural insecticides can be great. It will give you something to discuss with others at family reunions, club events, and when traveling. You can join people in discussions on the internet about organic gardening and natural insecticides. You can increase awareness of the benefits so that others are prompted to engage in the use of natural insecticides. You can help promote a healthier world, a healthier family life, ways to make the most out of your garden and landscaping. You can even save money by making your own natural insecticides.

There are rules to follow, of course, like mixing properly. If you mix the wrong ingredients you could either cause more harm or even be wasting your time if the items use cancel out each other’s effectiveness. You should understand how to use what you make, how much is safe, what plants or insects will be affected in a negative way so as not to harm the good ones, how to avoid foaming, how to store and for how long.

Prevention is always best. But because it isn’t always possible, taking safe alternatives to treatment is the next best thing. People have become disgusted with rising prices, so they decide they can do better if they just make their own products. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. If you don’t research and educate yourself, you could be doing more harm than good. Some mistakenly assume that natural means safe, and they neglect to learn about the effects and proper uses of natural insecticides.

Cooking is a way to kill harmful bacteria in some instances. But the heat from cooking can destroy the active ingredients of some of your homemade insecticides. Also, the water you use can destroy the effectiveness. If you have hard well water, there may be certain minerals that cause a problem. So, if you decide to make your own, know how to prepare them properly.

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How to Use Non-Plant Natural Insecticide

8:52 am by webmann in backyard garden, garden pests

Often, a natural insecticide can be used rather than a man-made chemical solution for unwanted backyard garden pests. Many of these preparations are made by using plants and plant derivatives. However, there are some non-plant kinds of natural insecticide.

Oils are commonly used as a natural insecticide. Some of the common oils used are mineral oil and different cooking oils. If cooking oil is used, liquid soap is added to the mixture. Either way, the oil is diluted with water and sprayed on the plant as a natural insecticide. The insects and eggs will be suffocated or dehydrated.

It certainly isn’t pleasant to collect animal urine, but you can use it for a natural insecticide. You mix it with soil and let it set for a couple of weeks. Then, you dilute it with water and put it only on mature leaves. Never use this natural insecticide in full sun.

Chalk is an easy type of natural insecticide to use. You should soak it in water. The soaking time varies depending on what grade you use. Construction grade chalk soaks for twelve hours and natural chalk soaks for days. You can only use this preparation on mature leaves.

If you have a source of fresh, unpasteurized cow’s milk, it can be used to make a natural fertilizer. It is combined with flour and water and sprayed on the plant. It kills many insects and their eggs.

Boric acid is, of course, a good all-around natural insecticide. It is used as a powder, or in a solution as a spray. It kills roaches, silverfish, termites, and many other insects. It is not a danger in any way to people working with it.

One way to protect your plants from the ravages of destructive insects is to use lime around the base of the plant. This is a form of natural insecticide. The lime powder not only repels most insects, but it suffocates the ones that try to come through anyway.

You can use a spray made of glue for a natural insecticide. The glue used is just the common household glue kids use in elementary school. You mix it with water and spray it where mites are a problem. The sprayer will become clogged if you don’t wash it, so do that afterwards.

To get rid of ticks in your yard, you can use a CO2 trap. This is a natural insecticide that employs the use of dry ice to trap ticks. A piece of flannel is used under the dry ice for the insects to gather on. This method gets rid of ticks in a seventy-five square foot area of yard.

A natural insecticide called milky spore is used for grubs. It comes in the form of granules. It is said that one treatment lasts for decades. It kills only the grubs. It leaves beneficial insects alive.

There are many types of natural insecticide. Some of the non-plant kinds are often called remedies. However, they work to kill insects and they come directly from nature. It seems that they are indeed natural insecticides.

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Using Soaps as a Natural Insecticide

9:56 am by webmann in backyard gardening, garden pests

Image from WikipediaSoap sounds harmless enough. We wash our bodies with it, clean our vehicles with it, wash our dishes with it, and blow bubbles with it. But if our children drink it, it will make them sick. Toddlers have innocent, strange ideas of what might be tasty! Our toddlers aren’t the only ones in our society that can become sick from soaps.

Soaps of different sorts are used as insecticides. A commercially sold soap called Neem oil soap is an oily solution which can work as both a repellent and as a fungicide. It can interfere with the good health of delicate plants, weak plants, new transplants, and drought stressed plants. The oil draws the sun to the leaf surface and can harm blossoms. It doesn’t work well with plants like the bleeding heart, gardenia, and lantana. So, be sure to test it on a small area and give it a full day to see if any wilting occurs before you apply it to larger areas.

Some people control wasps by spraying them with a dishwashing liquid solution. But dishwashing soap solutions can harm some of your plants. Any detergents that contain ingredients to dissolve grease can hurt the outer protective layers of plants that need these protective layers for survival. Insecticidal soaps are not your everyday soaps found in the kitchen, laundry room, or bathroom. You wouldn’t want to wash your baby with the same shampoo you use on your dog to control fleas.

There are many different types of soaps that we use in our homes for daily use that can be used to control insects, though. Controlling and repelling are not necessarily the same as destroying. Soaps also work to kill insects by penetrating the outer covering to cause cell leakage and dehydration.

If you need to protect your personal plants with your own homemade soap solutions, just make sure you know how to mix them properly and which plants won’t tolerate them well. Also, learn which soaps to use. Palmolive, Joy, Dawn, Ivory, Dove, Tide, and Murphy’s Oil Soap are some that are often used for insect control.

Soaps lose their effectiveness once they’re dry. Homemade recipes don’t have instructions. You should research before making them and be leery of buying any from someone else. Automatic dishwashing detergents are not recommended. If someone has used the wrong soap, it could harm your plants. You also don’t want to apply during the heat of the day or in sunlight since the use of soaps could burn your plants. It is possible to condition hard water to be able to mix it with insecticidal soaps. You may have to add a de-foaming agent as well.

Soaps are safe for ladybugs and predaceous wasps. These are beneficial insects that help your garden and plants thrive. Not all types of the same insect are harmful to us. Predaceous wasps don’t sting or bite. It’s important to know which insects to keep and which to remove or destroy.

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