Gardening Tips and Recipes to help you have a great garden
Aside from composting and improving the soil, there are many small things you can do to up your gardening game. Learning and using these little gardening hacks will certainly help you along. The great gardening hobby can get expensive, and traditional gardening requires you to put chemicals on your plants – yuck! Why go to all the trouble to grow beautiful vegetables if they aren’t healthy for you too?
These posts will give you great ideas and help you find new ways to do old things. Don’t you just love finding new ways to do things in the garden! So do I.
Natural Garlic Soap Bug Spray Recipe:
Puree 2 garlic cloves in a blender, slowly add 1 qt of water. Strain and add 1/4 teaspoon of liquid soap.
To use: Dilute 10 parts water to 1 part garlic mixture and spray on pests and diseased plants.
Also, here’s another insect repellent recipe for Garlic Oil Spray from How Stuff Works:
Garlic Oil Spray is a great, safe insect repellent. Simply put three to four cloves of minced garlic into two teaspoons of mineral oil. Let the mixture sit overnight, and then strain the garlic out of the oil. Add the oil to one pint of water, and add a teaspoon of biodegradable dish soap. Store in a bottle or jar, and dilute the mixture when you use it by adding two tablespoons of your garlic oil mixture to one pint of water.
This mixture works because the compounds in garlic (namely, diallyl disulfide and diallyl trisulfide) are irritating or deadly to many insects. The oil and soap help the mixture stick to plant leaves. What insects does garlic oil repel? Whiteflies, aphids, and most beetles will avoid plants sprayed with garlic oil. A word of caution: don’t apply this spray on a sunny day, because the oils can cause foliage to burn.
Posts from PreparednessMama:
Testing Your Soil pH Without a Kit
7 Ways to Make Natural Rooting Hormone
4 Season End Garden Tasks You Shouldn’t Skip
5 Ways to Recycle a Milk Jug in the Garden
DIY Willow Water – A Lesser Known Natural Rooting Hormone
15 Ways to Use Crushed Eggshells in the Home & Garden
Mason Jar Soil Test
10 Ways to Make Homemade Seed Starter Pots
30 Uses for Epsom Salts
Grow Salads in Pots & Tubs
Managing Garden Expectations
Natural Garden Pest Control Methods
Epsom Salt Round-up
Use This Trick to Get Almost Free Herbs
The Gardener’s Arsenal – 10 Things to Spray, Sprinkle & Brew for Garden Pest Control
Frugal Gardening Tip #5: Attract Pollinators
11 Ways to Start Seeds in Recycled Containers
Frugal Gardening Tip #3: Repair Soil This Winter
Frugal Gardening Tip 2: Reuse Broken Terracotta Pots
Frugal Gardening Tip #1: Seed Swap
Green Pest Management
Stinky But Effective – Comfrey Fertilizer Tea
10 Drought Buster Garden Strategies
DIY Manure Tea – Putting Manure to Work in Your Garden
Slug It Out! Natural Slug Solutions
Soil Polymer Crystals as Mulch for Container Gardening
Season Enders and Extenders
Put Your Garden to Bed for the Winter
4 Season End Garden Tasks You Shouldn’t Skip
Be sure and share some of your favorite “sprays and brews” and natural bug repellents in the comments below and visit our Pinterest board – Gardening Hacks for other great ideas.
Other gardening pages at PreparednessMama: Gardening for Food Production – What’s your Garden Style? – Growing Herbs – Get Growing – Composting & Soil Building