Homemade Pest Control Sprays

Make simple food-garden pest control  sprays at home, so you avoid the nasty chemicals that are present in many commercial products. These 'old as the road' recipes cost very little and have been effectively used by generations of food gardeners, without putting anything that is too poisonous to humans on your produce or in your soil.

Scale on a lemon tree

Safe Pest Control - Step 5 and 6

Best-practice safe pest-control for food-gardeners involves six steps (in this order):

1. Make your food garden as healthy as possible 
2. Don’t please your pests 
3. Keep them out 
4. Catch and remove 
5. Is further action needed? 
6. Use a low-impact pesticide 

Step 5 and 6 are discussed below.

Preventing and Overcoming Mildew

Yesterday my peas and tomato plants looked vigorous and healthy.  Today mildew arrived seemingly out of nowhere and my plants suddenly look very ill. Where did the mildew come from? Could I have prevented its arrival? And what can I do to get rid of it? This blog post tries to answer all these questions.

A tomato leaf affected by Powdery Mildew