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Insect Oils & SpraysKill pests without using poison. Skip has a safe solution to your insect problems. |
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Transcript: Insect Oils & Sprays
Small soft-bodied insects are common pest problems in our gardens and landscapes. They are quite easy to control with a couple of simple products that are very low in toxicity and work quite well. I’m speaking of soaps and oils.The first type, soaps, work quite well on insects because, unlike our bodies which can be bathed in soap without any harm, when you put soap on a small soft-bodied insect like an aphid or a mite, it’s like throwing battery acid on them; it’s very damaging. It’s a physical damage to the insect, not a poisoning.
They need to contact the insects to work well, so you want to direct soaps upward from underneath the plant and make sure you have good coverage. It’s best to spray early in the day when it’s cool or maybe very late in the day when it’s a little cooler and the sun isn’t baking down on the leaves.
But soap works quite well. Once it dries, it’s no longer damaging to any insects. So as beneficials move in, they’re not going to be threatened by secondary dangers of a residual pesticide.
Oils, on the other hand, are another group that works quite well much in the same way as soaps. Dormant oils are used during the dormant season when there aren’t any leaves on the plants. They’re heavier and less refined and they work well in controlling scales as well as mite eggs on your plants.
Once the weather warms up and you begin getting growth on the plants, you want to switch over to a light-weight summer oil or horticultural oil. These are more highly refined and they’re not as damaging to the foliage of the plant.
Whether you choose a soap or an oil spray, you can get good coverage and good control with a very effective low tox product.
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Last Updated:
July 6, 2006