When your great-grandmother was a newborn bride, to stretch the families budget, she’d have a backyard garden. Back then, there weren’t any off-the-shelf sprays or tiny pellets she could use to control the pests that were eating the cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes and whatever was planted in her victory garden.

Nowadays, many families are doing the same thing: Growing their own. Fresh from the garden always tastes better than what you grab at the supermarket. Trust us. A fresh tomato from the backyard will bring more pleasure than anything bought at the grocery store. But like your great-gramma, you’re going to face the same issues — bugs and troublemakers that have the potential to turn your spinach into a holey mess.

Organic is in

Want to feed the family without the use of pesticides? Don’t get us wrong, the right pellets, powders and sprays will not poison you. But if you want to go really organic this coming Earth Day, we’ve got some homemade remedies that you might consider when holding back the tsunami of pests that are seeking a free meal. They’re pretty inexpensive to concoct. Let’s get to it. Try these DIY remedies.

• Soft-bodied garden pests like slugs and earwigs
  Usually you can get this stuff from a pool supply store. It’s called diatomaceous earth. Sprinkle this fine powder on top of the plants and around the edges of the beds. This is not a chemical killer. It takes a different route. Sort of like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears. Why? The tiny particles are really sharp and cut into the soft bodied pests like little razors.
• Mealybugs, mites and aphids
  Take a quart of water and mix a few drips of liquid Ivory soap and a tablespoon of canola oil. Don’t worry, soap and oil come together when you shake-up the container. Find an old, empty spray, bottle, clean it well, putting the blend into it. Hit the top and bottom of the leaves. It’s the oil that does the dirty work. It smothers the pests.
• Mites and the like
  You’re going to use the same technique as what we did above. Only this time we’re going to substitute some type of Louisiana hot sauce instead of canola oil. Use two tablespoons of the cayenne pepper-based juice. Make sure that when you go spraying that you regularly shake-up what’s inside your spritzer.
• Grubs
  A good treatment using this formula could keep grubs away for something like three-decades — thirty years. It’s a substance called milky spore. Check-out your lawn and garden center for this material. What it does is give the grubs a disease that wipes them out. It won’t hurt any of the other natural organisms. Milky spore multiplies as the years roll on. Grubs are in effect the larvae of Japanese beetles. It’s a twofer. You smack-back the grubs and thus eliminate the Japanese beetles.

Disease Control

It ain’t just bugs. Plants have other problems. We’re talking diseases and shortcomings that befall the home garden plants.

• Powder-like mildew
  Use a spray bottle, combining equal parts of water and milk, spraying it on infected plants. Do this once a week for three weeks and say so long to mildew.
• Fungal diseases and certain bugs
  That spray bottle is getting quite a work-out. Mix-up two tablespoons of baking soda, a tablespoon of cooking oil, a couple of drops of liquid Ivory soap and a quart of water to diss most fungal diseases. This combination also helps eliminate certain bugs. Another fix is just use baking soda — same amount — into a quart of water and spritz every couple of days until the issue subsides.

Again, Vulcan Termite and Pest Control isn’t saying that chemical-based sprays are a bad thing. If you decide to go the inorganic route, have at it. Follow directions and enjoy the harvest.

Great-grandpop used to take a clean bucket of fresh water, a few tablespoons of sugar and a dash of vinegar and, what he used to call “get the milk right from the udder.”

He’d pick a couple of leaves of lettuce, cleaning the dirt off in the simple salad dressing and eat it as he walked through his garden. Now, that’s a testament to the harmlessness of great-gramma’s home remedies.

Original Source: https://www.vulcantermite.com/eco-friendly-options/controlling-bugs-the-natural-way