Powdery Mildew Spray

Got this from Gardner's Net.

1 gallon water
3 tablespoons baking soda
1 tablespoon bleach
1 teaspoon dishwashing liquid

1. Snip and remove leaves that are worst affected.

2. Mix ingredients with water.

3. Spray remaining leaves top and undersides.

4. Apply a heavier dose on leaves that have signs of infection and only lightly on unaffected leaves as bleach can actually harm and discolor the leaves.

Extremely important: Do not use too much bleach! Use no more than 1 part bleach to 10 parts water. We hesitate to recommend using bleach as it can harm your plants if too much is applied. Use it at your own risk and try to avoid spraying it on healthy leaves.

Hot Pepper Spray

This can be used to repel, deer, rabbits and other pests from your flowers and some vegetables. Note, use caution with vegetables as a peppery taste may remain on the fruit.

6 peppers, the hotter the better
2 cups water
1 quart water

1. Put hot peppers and two cups of water into a blender.

2. Mix at high speed for 1-2 minutes.

3. Pour into a container and set aside for up to one day.

4. Strain liquid through a cheese cloth.

5. Add liquid into a one quart container. Fill container to top with water.

6. Apply liberally to plants. Re-apply every week to two weeks or after a rain.

Insecticide Garlic Spray

I found this recipe and some others over at Gardeners Net.

The nice thing about it is you can use it inside, outside, in soil, out of soil. You don't have to worry about it poisoning you, your family, pets, or your plants but it certainly repel insects!

Insecticide Garlic Spray

1 garlic bulb
2 cups water
1 gallon water

1. Take an entire garlic bulb and two cups of water and blend in blender.

2. Mix at high speed for 1-2 minutes.

3. Pour into a container and set aside for up to one day.

4. Strain liquid through a cheese cloth.

5. Mix liquid with one gallon of water.

6. Apply liberally on top and bottom of leaves.
   

Having Faith

You know that tomato plant I was really starting to fear wouldn't do anything? Well, he has friends! We have tomatoes! Those little suckers sneaked up on me and man we're just proud of them. I called my father almost immediately and told him and he boasted that he'd picked five today. Well, I'll see his five with my two organically grown any day!

This little guy was getting a spray down with kelp and DE when we noticed he managed to hide the fact that his blooms turned tomatoes sometimes last week.

I'm pleased as punch. I should have never doubted my poor tomato plant. Now if only I could get the bell pepper to do more than look like a tiny blade of grass.

Good News for the Rain

We got the call for the rest of our rain barrels. There is a local car wash that uses eco friendly soap by the 55 gallon drum so we asked if the guy could save us a few. He called and we picked them up. I have 4 rain barrels now. And we're going to be working out how to get them set up now that we spent the better part of the day running water through them to get them cleaned up. I know that a lot of folks say to use food grade barrels but I see no reason why this won't work. We have no plans to drink out of these barrels, we are going to water the garden with them and all the eco friendly car washing soap has been thoroughly rinsed out. If my carrots come out tasting like a car wash we'll get the food grade stuff. But for now, we've got free barrels and a weekend project.

And while we were out, I bought a cage for holding two suet cakes. We got that set up to encourage birds. We've got our hummingbird feeder out and we've seen the hummer from last year only twice and she hasn't been back. When I took the feeder down to change the water out for her I found out why. A small spider capped off one of the drinking flowers and had an egg sac in there. This will not do. I got it cleaned up and I'm going to get it all straightened out and put it back out for her with some nice yellow ribbons flowing off the edges. We had high traffic last year, but the bugs are moving in and so that means more spiders and if they are living in the food source of our favorite hummer, that means she'll go find easy food somewhere else.

The squirrels destroyed our bird feeder project. We didn't get a chance to even fill it back up before the critters ripped it out of the tree, tore it open and ate what they wanted leaving it ruined on the ground. So we currently only have seed in a small box on the back fence. The birds aren't as frequent now, unfortunately because they have to fight the squirrel. I'm going to have to get squirrel food so it or they will leave the bird seed alone. I really want them to be around because of the pest problems we're having even before the garden got started. Earwigs and centipedes, carpenter bees, palmetto bugs, mosquito eaters, ants and black flies have all but taken over and it was kinda scary how quickly they just moved in and started making things difficult.

Then they started coming in the house and that was when I started getting a little pissed off. I like keeping my doors open, but I can't do that with these insects walking right on in. I'm trying to refrain from going to the store and just spraying the entire yard with something not so healthy. The DE isn't working as quickly as I'd like. I'm seeing a sharp decline in the earwig population out back, but now I'm seeing them up front. It's like they just decided to move. I doused that area with a healthy layer of DE and they moved up onto the deck. So I doused the entire area around the deck, the trees, under the deck and I started at the entrance to the house if they thought they were going to get cute and walk in while I wasn't there. We'll see what happens.

Vinegar in the Garden

Grow beautiful azaleas: Occasionally water plants with a mixture of two tablespoons vinegar to one quart water. Azaleas love acidic soil.

Kill grass on walks and driveways. Pour full strength on unwanted grass.

Kill weeds. Spray full strength on growth until plants have starved.

Increase soil acidity.

In hard water areas, add a cup of vinegar to a gallon of tap water for watering acid loving plants like rhododendrons,gardenias, or azaleas. The vinegar will release iron in the soil for the plants to use.

Freshen cut flowers. Add 2 tablespoons vinegar and 1 teaspoon sugar for each quart of water.

Prolong the life of flowers in a vase. Add two tablespoons of vinegar plus three tablespoons of sugar per quart of warm water.Stems should be in three to four inches of water.

Neutralize garden lime. Rinse your hands liberally with vinegar after working with garden lime to avoid rough and flaking skin.Clean pots before re-potting, rinse with vinegar to remove excess lime.

In the Garden

Occasionally, lightly sprinkle baking soda around flowerbeds to prevent rabbits from nibbling at your buds.

Sprinkle baking soda on slugs to get rid of them without having to resort to costly and toxic pesticides.

To sweeten your tomatoes by reducing their acidity, sprinkle baking soda lightly on the soil around your tomato plants. The soda from an old box used to absorb odors in the refrigerator is fine for this purpose.

Non-toxic pesticide

Put baking soda under sinks near pipe openings and along basement windows to repel ants, silver fish and roaches. Roaches will dehydrate and die after eating baking soda.

Slugs?

Take the screw on lid from a wide mouth jar, fill it about half way with beer and set that out. The slugs will be attracted to the salty liquid and otherwise meet their demise.

Diatomes For The Win

It's a hard thing to control pests inside and outside the house. It's even harder to control them without doing harm to the environment. The cool thing is Diatomaceous Earth, its a fossil that is fine as talc and shreds the insides of pests after they walk through it and then ingest it while preening. You can't beat it, its a powder that doesn't harm pets or children as long as they aren't breathing the dust long term. But its good for outside and inside and controls a wide range of critters that might move in and start chewing on your garden or get into the house and take root so you seem to never get rid of them. Best of all, its chemical free. A 10 on the Greener Meter.