Natural Pest Deterrents

When you grow things, bugs come.  It’s like a welcome mat for insects…all that lovely green foliage just waiting for them to suck the life out of it.  We don’t like bugs that mess with our food, but everything we put on our vegetable plants ends up in our bodies.  Hmmmm….what if the food itself could help??

I’ve been experimenting with some homemade garlic pepper tea.  Very simple to make, and it seems to be giving me the result I was looking for.  Just be careful – stand upwind when you spray, or your friends will avoid you!

Garlic Pepper Tea

Take  a couple garlic cloves, and pop them whole into a gallon jug.  An old milk jug with a cap works great.  Slice up some fresh hot peppers and add them too.  Fill the jug with water, cover, and let it sit for 24 hours.  Then you can pour it into a spray bottle and spray the foliage on your plants.

 I’ve been using this for the past few weeks and it’s gotten rid of cabbage worms on my Brussels sprouts, cucumber beetles on my beans and potatoes, and a few others that I don’t know the names of.  The smell is pretty awful – it smells like rotting garlic – but that part goes away quickly and the garden itself smells fine after an hour or so.  Side benefit – I feel very powerful. J