Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Natural Pesticides

Comments from Mercola article:

My favorite is peppermint oil. Not to question the Doc here, but I have read reports that specifically suggest NOT applying Boric Acid to carpets, especially where small children and animals would be present. The back of a cabinet may be fine, but not out in the open.

Eating garlic is supposed to be a good bug repellant as well, if you get bitten often.  Also, eat less sugar or eliminate it from your diet if possible.

I have found a great weed killer.  One gallon of white vinegar, you pour a little out to make room for one cup of table salt.  "Then add 10 drops of dish detergent.  ( I used blue Dawn).  Mix together and put in spray bottle.  This will kill everything you spray it on.  I think it is much better than Roundup.

We crush organic hot chili peppers into a fine powder then "dust" the plants with hot chili pepper dust.  Does not harm the plants, but, insects and slugs do not come near.  Plants are completely healthy.

I heard that rodents are allergic to peppermint oil, and if you soak cottonballs with it and scatter them around the house, the mice/rats will leave and not return.  My friend did that before leaving on a four-day camping trip.  She said when she got home the house smelled like a candy cane, but the mice were gone!


*For stubborn ants, moisten the aspartame with water.

tea trea oil and olive oil work great. My aunt who's three daughters stay the summers with us told as she was getting onto her plain to go back one year the girls had head lice. we used the traditional stuff sadly and worse it didn't work. tea tre oil and olive oil kill them dead.

for mice, i have tried freshcab google it and buy some. It is all natural and does appear to work after a few days. Also clear up clutter on floor and leave no food open anwhere.

I've successfully used diatomacious earth for fleas for years.  It's non-toxic- you could eat it without harm.  Avoid inhailing it.  Apply when the air us still.  I alsu use it on the cat's bedding.  Place loose bedding in large plastic bag,add a couple of tablespoons of D.E., close the bag, and shake vigerously.  Any fleas that come into contact with it will die.  The D.E. has sharp edges, and will penetrate the hard shells and dehydrate them.  This works on any hard shelled insects.  I've found Neem oil to be effective on spider mites.  It's the only thing I've found that will actually get rid of them.  It does take more than one spraying, because more hatch out.    I have tried D.E. and it does seem to work but it was requiring daily application to my cat (and he LOVED it) but even with a mask it was irritating my lungs to the point that I had to give up after 3 days. I am prone to bronchitis and this was irritating my lungs to that point (I had already gotten to what I call the "wheezy lung" stage when I gave up.) I did get the right kind of D.E. (not for pools). My cat is so allergic to the flea bites and I felt since I had tried a myriad of other natural remedies that hadn't worked I needed to go ahead and get the flea applications for him to get the fleas back under control. I HATED putting chemicals on him but he clearly felt better after the fleas stopped biting him and were dying off. Maybe I needed a bigger better mask for myself but does anyone have any other natural remedies for flea control that I could try in the future if they come back. There are tons of outdoor cats around here and although my baby is an indoor cat, I can't help but suspect that I have brought fleas in from outside before. The lifecycle of a flea doesn't help matters either. Garlic for cats is not an option (can cause anemia in cats), I have tried the lemon bath which helped at one point but didn't get rid of them completely (cut and boil a pound of lemons, let the solution sit overnight, apply to cat without soap, rinse...) I've heard mixed info about essential oils and cats. The page everyone sends you to seems to have no scientific info or even examples ... other than the obvious where people clearly don't know how to work with essential oils and put something on an animal without a carrier oil.

For more information about pesticides see the following sites
Fluoride Action Network Pesticide Project
www.fluoridealert.org/f-pesticides.htm
Environmental Working Group's Shoppers Guide to pesticide in produce
http://www.ewg.org//
You may also want to see the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign at the Organic Consumers Association
www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

Soaking the head and scalp in very warm olive oil with some optional tea tree oil is GREAT for lice.
Leave it on for a couple hours, wrapped up in a shower cap and warm hat/towel to keep as hot as you can stand it.. you want to cook the eggs.  Then rinse with vinegar.  You can keep the vinegar on for about 30 minutes if you can stand the smell, it's excellent for dandruff and dry scalps too.
It still smells better than the chemicals.  (Supposedly, the lice treatments are designed to NOT kill all the lice/eggs the first round, so you have to buy more than one box.)
The olive oil will leave your hair super silky.  I do this treatment at least once a month just for soft hair and a dandruff-free scalp.
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For garden snails:  leave dishes of beer in the ground so they will crawl in, get drunk, and die very happy.
Ants:  hate cinnamon, cloves, and cayenne pepper.  Use them where ants are entering.
Fleas: leave a dish of soapy water under a night light at night, they'll jump for the light and drown.



We have lots of little ants in our bathroom and have tried a concoction of boric acid and powdered sugar.  I've heard they will avoid boric acid alone, but mix it with something sweet then they will take the boric acid back to the nest killing the rest of the ants including the queen.

I had an infestation of white fly on my peppers and tomatoes last spring. Following my gardening yahoogroup's suggestion I sprayed with a mixture of 3 quarts water, 1 quart nonfat milk and 1 teaspoon of soda. I shook it up in a gallon jug and filled my sprayer. I had to spray my plants in the rain that day out of necessity but it still killed them! I didn't see any more until a month later and I sprayed again. My garden group's suggestion is to spray every 2 weeks.
My cure for slugs? I got a pair of ducks. ;)

Notice that 97 percent of pesticides are chlorine-based.
Chlorine is the key element in the most toxic compounds known to science, Dioxins. Chlorine is the crucial C in PCB's, TCE (solvents, drycleaning etc) Triclosan, PVC, the list is endless...
Clorox rivals BigPharma in aggressive TV advertizing to promote chlorine chemistry.
Focus on CHLORINE ! ! !

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