Organic Insecticides

I know we are moving rapidly into late fall weather, even though it is only 1 week after the official fist day of fall, but I wanted to share what I had learned about a few organic insecticides.

I consider it late fall because my mom announced that CBC is calling for a cold front to move in and snow next week (yes, I said the 's' word...sigh!). She has informed me that it is officially time to take in the vegetable garden. We will be working on that on Sunday. On Saturday, I plan to move the last of the perennials into my new flower garden, and place wood chips around those plants that need an extra bit of protection this winter.

When I was planning all of these necessary chores, I noticed the leaf damage quite a few of my plants sustained this year from insects and fungus. I tried a few of the organic kinds of things I had heard about and found no dent at all in the problems. So I must say I reverted to using chemical insecticides and fungicides to clear up the problem.

My plan for next year is to have a plan - to have organic insecticides and fungicides in place and ready to go before the infestation occurs. I was watching a show about a couple in Ontario that practice organic gardening, and they very casually mentioned that they use rhubarb tea to treat for insecticides - for the very reason that the leaves of rhubarb plants are poisonous. I thought, "Now that makes perfect sense." So I looked up some Rhubarb Tea recipes for an organic insecticide. There are tons of recipes on the net, so take a look. I'm going to give this one a try:

 http://vegetalshapes.com/OrganicInsecticides.html

Rhubarb tea #1- boil 0.5 Kg (1 pound) chopped rhubarb leaves in 1litre (1 quart) water for 30 minutes. Filter and sprinkle.  Use against aphids and other pests.

Rhubarb tea #2 - put 0.5 Kg (1 pound) leaves in 7 liter (7.3 quarts) water and let it stay 24 hours. Filter and sprinkle.  Use against aphids, whiteflies, spider mites, caterpillars and other pests.

Note: The best time to apply the tea is early morning or late evening. Do not apply in the hot, sunny part of the day, as this mixture could burn the plants.

So, here it is. I will come back to this post next early summer and look this information up. It will be an important part of next year's planning.

Happy fall days, everyone!