A Natural Insect Repellent for your Home Vegetable Garden

Two growing seasons ago some of my plants really got hit hard with an outbreak of white flies. Harmless to humans, they can destroy an entire garden and reproduce at an alarming rate in less than a month. Although they did get one of my plants before I had the chance to bring them under control, I did take some steps necessary to make sure that never happened again. One of those steps I took was making this natural insect repellent. Whereas I wanted to get rid of the white flies, I did not want to use some harmful chemical that would get rid of the beneficial insects and organisms in my garden. Here is the formula I used to help me with these insects and many others.

There are a variety of chemical based insect repellents on the market that work very well, but like most chemical repellents they are meant to “kill” not repel and if they are killing what they say they are going to kill then chances are they are probably “killing” everything else in the garden as well. But what you really want is to “repel” the insects so they do not come to your garden at all.

A good natural insect repellent starts with garlic and hot pepper. As a caution, depending on the type of hot pepper product you use it could cause irritation to the skin and eyes, so make sure you wear gloves and protective eye wear.

Get your ingredients for this natural insect repellent together. You will need five to seven cloves of garlic, one to one and a half tablespoons of a hot pepper powder or extract, cayenne works very well in this recipe, and 3 cups of hot, but not boiling, water.

Grind up the garlic in a food processor or blender and then add in the hot pepper extract product that you have used. Finally pour the hot water in and mix it up really good to combine the ingredients. Pour the mixture into a container such as a Tupperware bowl and set it aside for three days (yes three days) to allow the ingredients to steep thoroughly.

Once the three days are up, and using a strainer to separate the ingredients from the liquid, pour the liquid into a spray bottle that you will use to spray in the garden.

Finally you are ready to use the natural insect repellent. Although you could, it is not necessary to spray the repellent directly on the plants. Spray around your plants which create a barrier for them. Reapply after every rain or heavy watering.

As you can see it is a very easy recipe to follow and will do wonders for your garden and sanity by repelling those pesky insects that can wreak havoc on your crops.

About the Author
Mike is the author of the book Vegetable Gardening for the Average Person: A Guide to Vegetable Gardening for the Rest of Us, available where gardening books are sold. Sign up for Mike`s vegetable gardening newsletter at his website: AveragePersonGardening.com and he will send you a free pack of vegetable seeds to get your garden started.