 | ||||||
Special Recipes For The Garden
Chili-Vinegar Spray for Fruit Trees
4 jalapenos, habaneros or other hot chiles, seeded & chopped
2 cloves garlic
1½ quarts water
2 oz. Beer
½ cup vinegar
Mix chopped chiles, garlic, water and beer. Cover and bring to a boil for 5 minutes, then let the mixture steep in the pot for 24 hours. Add the vinegar, strain well and pour into a sprayer. Spray leaves (but not blossoms). Will help keep birds away.
Aphids on Rose Bushes
Mulch banana peels into the soil at the base of the rose bushes. This will strengthen them and ward off disease-bearing aphids.
Cucumber Beetles
Make beetle traps from open cans or milk cartons baited with melon orother garden targets. Place the traps around the garden and check them early in the morning and discard.
Earwig Repellant
Option 1:
Make rolls out of newspaper, soak them in water then set them out overnight. First thing in the morning the rolls will be full earwigs. Put the rolls in a tightly sealed bag and out with the trash. Keep at this for a while and you will be rid of your problem.
Option 2:
Fill old tuna or petfood cans with ½ inch of vegetable oil; place
several cans around the infested area. When fulljust dump bodies in trash and refill.
Fungus and Mildew
1 bulb of garlic (about 20 cloves), chopped
1 quart of hot water
Place chopped garlic in the water and let steep for at least 24 hours. Strain and spray on plants to eliminate fungus and mildew.
Pest Spray
1 cup grated castile soap
1 cup coarsely chopped tobacco leaves, fresh or cured
3 cups boiling water, divided
1 entire bulb garlic, peeled and crushed or chopped
1 cup of chopped fresh tansy (optional)
In a bowl, dissolve soap in 1 cup boiling water and set aside. In a blender, pour remainder of boiling water over tobacco leaves and let set for ten minutes or so. Add garlic and tansy (if available) and whirl until smooth. Strain through cheesecloth and discard solid materials. Add herbal liquid soap to mixture and stir; pour into a spray bottle. To use, spray the herbal liquid on insects and their environs at early morning and dusk for three days in a row. Because this mix drives most bugs away, but does not kill them, apply as needed.
Deer Repellant for Fruit Trees
To repel deer, roll several pounds of soft, scented herbal soap into balls. Tie the balls into small bundles, using cloth or net and string. Hang several bundles from each fruit tree. The deer won't come near the trees. As a bonus, rain will eventually melt the soap bundles and lend a bit of alkalinity to the soil below.
Snail Repellants
Bury a small bowl or can flush with the ground and fill it with beer to atract and trap snails.
Fertilize Naturally
Use compost to return needed bacteria, enzymes and nutrients to the soil. Include clover or other nitrogen-fixing plants in the lawn to make it self-fertilizing.
Dry Out Lawn Fungus
Dethatch; add soil bacteria and re-seed. Fungus grows only in wet, thatchy, overfertilized lawns.
I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.
William Penn
| ||||||
The plastic lids on coffee cans or other products can be painted with honey or a commercial sticky solution, and they can be hung in greenhouses to catch aphids. If the lids are washed regularly they will last a long time and can be reused over and over.
|
