Chosing One Product for Pest Control

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.

Horticultural oils (don't use Neem oil) comes in smaller and larger quantities.