When chatting with Mary, an Amish lady who has a nursery on her farm; I was given a little tip, on natural bug control for our garden plants. Since she has been successfully gardening/farming without chemicals as a lifestyle for longer than I could imagine...my attention was glued to her every word. She claims the recipe works on "all bugs". I thought that was a claim worth remembering, especially since I am committed to organic methods and am still learning my garden insects; it is all still intimidating to me! Having a simple remedy for "all bugs" was very attractive to me! :-)
We had an infestation critters on our 4 little eggplant plants, they had chewed up the leaves pretty good before we noticed them, so we were instantly in crisis mode. When we tried to identify the culprits, we weren't having much luck. That is when I remembered Mary's advice. I didn't want to loose precious time on researching while they were eating my eggplant (I saw my baba ganoush disappearing before my very eyes!) So I figured I would try Mary's recipe:
Amish Bug Spray for "All Bugs"
1/2C Brown Sugar to a gallon of boiling water (to dissolve the sugar)
Let it cool off!
Than spray all over your plants, being sure get all the leaves as best you can.
Too simple (and cheap) to be true right?? Wrong! It worked! We sprayed them well one time and the little rascals disappeared! I have to mention here that Mary warned me that it wears off in a week (especially if it rains) and it is best to reapply weekly - so keep that in mind - but in this case, we didn't have too. It has been over a month since then and we have not seen ANY bugs on those plants! The plants are pitiful looking. The leaves are almost like lace since we didn't catch it early in the infestation. They are still small too (no wonder -since their sun collecting leaves are easily at half capacity with all those holes)! However, we just noticed that we have eggplants forming now anyway! So we are excited!
As for Mary's natural spray for all bugs - It's a keeper in my garden notebook!
This post was shared at the Barn Hop
Oh THANK YOU, the flea beetles have been eating mine too! Totally stripping the little leaves right off! Thank you Mary!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. It is always surprising how the simplest of things are the most purposeful. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to try it!
ReplyDeleteThat is amazing, I never would have thought of that.. The Amish people are brilliant, I wish I had some as friends soo I could learn all of their tricks.. I'm going to give this recipe a try.. Thanks
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this. I'm gonna try it (too simple not to!) ;)
ReplyDeleteThanks Pamela!!!We have had very few bugs this year, but I will keep this in mind if they all decide to come for a visit soon, LOL!!!
ReplyDeleteShalom,Moira
Excellent! We're going to try it too!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!!!!
Love Lus x
Thanks for sharing very useful information.I'll try this also.
ReplyDeleteDoes it only work on plants or can you spray it on the bugs in your house too?
ReplyDeleteI have no idea why this would work but I'm gonna try it and report back!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the very nice post about pest control. I will try this.
ReplyDeleteWill it work for squash bugs?
ReplyDeleteThe only thing we have found effective to date to eleminate squash bugs without pesticides, is to literealy squash them. We collect them by hand and smooth them. It is a tedious and grose task - which requires daily application. If someone has a better self proven organic method - please tell me!
ReplyDeleteCastille soap and water kills nearly every bug. Add a little diatomeaceous earth to the mix, shake well, spray. Nothing can survive that!
ReplyDeleteIf you use peppermint castille soap, it will even run off the rodents...
Just do not spray while the sun is shining hot, that will kill your plants...