Essential oils play a big role in organic gardening. Various types of oils help to repel insects and kill invasive weeds that try to overtake the edible parts of the garden. Keep your home garden growing abundantly without chemicals with these tips for gardening with essential oils.
How to Mix and Use
When using essentials oil to keep pests out of the garden, mix a few drops of the oil in a spray bottle filled with water, then spray on all the plants. The oils are natural and won’t harm the plants or the humans doing the spraying. Can you say that about Round-Up???
Make spraying for pests or weeds the last thing you do after working in the garden so it will have time to settle on the plants and soil.
Insect Repelling Oils
* Garlic oil is very pungent and works well at repelling several pests, including mosquitoes and cats.
* Lemongrass, citronella, eucalyptus and cajeput essentials oils are very effective for garden use. All repel a variety of flying and crawling pests without harming vegetation.
* Peppermint essential oil repels ants, lice, spiders and fleas. If you own pets, it’s a great to use on the lawn to keep the flea population at bay. Soak cotton balls with non-diluted peppermint oil and tuck around the perimeter of your garden to keep rats and squirrels from eating your vegetables.
* Pine oil repels fleas, ticks, slugs and snails. Good to use in the garden and landscape when you have children and/or pets.
Thieves Oil Pesticide – Thieves oil has clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus, and rosemary. In a standard size spray bottle, fill almost full of water and then add enough Thieves Cleaner to color the water.
* Rosemary essential oil is a natural mosquito and cat repellent. To keep cats from using your garden as their own personal bathroom, try this trick. Spray small strips of cloth with rosemary oil water and hang the strips up around the perimeter of your garden. Cats hate the smell of rosemary and will stay away – so will the mosquitos. Re-wet cloth strips weekly or after a rain.
* Tea tree, lavender and clove essential oils are good all-around insect repellents.
Fungus Killer
Moss and other types of fungus grow on garden soil and deplete nutrients before plants can uptake them. Kill the fungus with these anti-fungal essential oils. Add 10 drops of the essential oil of your choice to a spray bottle, then spray the soil thoroughly.
* Cinnamon, clove, peppermint, onion, garlic, rosemary, thyme, tea tree or oregano.
* Neem oil will rid the garden of nematodes which live in the soil and attack plant roots.
Attract Pollinators
Essential oils can be used not only to repel the bad guys, but attract the good guys too. Attract natural pollinators to your garden with orange blossom, sage, yarrow, lavender, catmint and fennel essential oils mixed and used the same ways as the repellents.
As always my fave oils are Young Living oils. Not only do they produce the highest quality oils out there…they use essential oils for all pest and weed control on their farms. Pretty nifty!
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