SO EXCITED!!!!!! I was looking for a natural solution for my garden problems when I found essential oils! And they greatly reduced my garden problems!! I promised to post my discoveries, so here they are:
PEPPERMINT: General spray for pests in the garden at 18 drops of peppermint to 8 oz. water in a spray bottle (see last year's post), but I never did incorporate the two drops white fir like in my video write up. I plan to include it in my spray this year. But it did reduce pests, and at one point I had a lot of spiders in my garden, and it decreased them, too. It chased ants away from anywhere I didn't want them, and...
MOST EXCITING!!!
I didn't have even one vole in my garden last year!! (For those not familiar, voles are like gophers) The year before, voles ate my best tomatoes and peas. They would burrow up under my plants and feast on my best produce...the food I planted for my family...rodents eating MY food!! GROSS!! They also killed my young apple tree in the course of several years by burrowing up beside the trunk and eating the trunk by the ground. But not this year!!!! =) So my approach with peppermint to treat voles in the garden (becuase I still have them in my yard, they just don't go into my garden) is to water with furrows, and about once a week add a drop or two of peppermint from my doTERRA bottle in the pooling water in each furrow. If I saw a vole hole near my garden (which I did) I would run water straight down the hole and put six drops of peppermint in the running water. LIKE VOLE DISAPPEARING MAGIC!!
I had concerns that maybe spraying peppermint might deter bees from pollinating. So I did an experiment where I found a group of flowers that bees of all kinds just loved! I sprayed it on the flowers (not on the bees because that's just mean, and possibly dangerous!!) ;) Within 15 minutes, bees returned joyfully to the flowers.
I did also spray my peach tree with peppermint. The video I watched said that it would reduce but not entirely kill off pests on fruit, but that it was better to cut around a few worms than put poison on your trees. My peaches did indeed have fewer worms last year! So I did further experimenting. I found a worm, and put a big juicy peach by it that I had sprayed the with the peppermint spray and observed for several hours. The worm never once crawled on the peach. SUCCESS!!
I don't know what oils might help deter birds from eating peaches, but if you do, please leave a comment!! But I tried this approach last year. Netting I bought from the fabric section secured by clothes pins. It think it worked pretty well. Which has nothing to do with oils, but I thought I'd share. =)
ON GUARD: My referenced video said that if peppermint didn't work, to use other oils in other sprays, including On Guard. So I did several times, with some success.
LAVENDER: Worked great for aphids on my apple trees!
Well that's all I remember; maybe I should have taken notes as I went, but I was too busy gardening!! (My happy place.)
Here are some things I have yet to find a natural solution for:
earwigs
snails (although I think peppermint helped a bit) If you have ideas for these, please leave a comment!!
DOTERRA INTERNATIONAL ON FACEBOOK POSTED THIS
this year: Keep your garden pest-free with essential oils! Try mixing 8 ounces of water in a spray bottle with ½ teaspoon natural soap and 12 drops of dōTERRA essential oil. Remember to shake the bottle frequently to keep the oil mixed with the water.
AND A CHART WITH THIS INFO:
ants: peppermint
beetles: peppermint, thyme
chiggers: geranium, lemongrass, thyme
cutworm: thyme
flies: clove, geranium, peppermint, rosemary
mosquitoes: geranium, lemongrass
moths: peppermint, geranium
slugs: cedarwood
spiders: peppermint
ticks: geranium, thyme, lemongrass
weevil: cedarwood
Until next time, I wish you successful gardens!!
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