How to Control Pests in your Garden, 3 Organic Sprays I’m USING This Year

What's going on growers, it's James Piccioni coming to you live from Jersey. Summer is here and the harvests are starting to come in heavy, but that means the pests are starting to come too. So today I want to share with you three organic sprays that I'm using in my garden this year to keep it pest and disease free. Let's go. Earlier in the year I made a video about preventative pest management and some of the practices that we could put to place in the garden to make sure we avoid pests and disease. But what should we do if we have those pests now? That's what I want to share with you today. This video is going to give you some of these organic sprays that have worked for me. So I think it'll be a big help to you. You'll notice a lot of these plants here. They're looking fantastic. They don't have any issues and we've stayed on top of them, made sure they're doing well. But there's some other plants over here, some potatoes that I have a couple problems with and that's going to bring us to our first spray, neem oil. This organic spray is one of my favorites for a number of reasons. One of them is because neem oil is an overall broad spectrum poison, repellent and deterrent for a lot of your insects. So it's going to work for a bunch of different things. Another reason is because it's completely natural. It's just made from the oil from a neem tree, which is a tree in India. One of the reasons that this works so incredibly well, neem oil specifically, is because it has a certain chemical compound in it known as azadirachtin. This is the chemical compound. This is the stuff that's going to negatively affect your insects. So if you get neem oil that doesn't have the azadirachtin in it, it's not worth it. It's not even going to work. So when you go to Lowe's and Home Depot and stuff and you grab the neem oil like this, it's garbage. It's not really, it doesn't have any azadirachtin in it. If you look in the bottom left, it's just basically, it says clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil. So this doesn't have what's going to actually kill a lot of those insects. You're not going to get the beneficials that you really, really get from pure neem oil in here. This is just going to be basically an oil spray, a smothering spray. This is what you want. 100% cold press neem oil with azadirachtin. I'll put a link to the Amazon in here and this way you guys can order and know which one you're getting. Now what we're going to do is just mix this neem oil together and since it's just pure oil here, we have to make our mixture. So I'm going to show you how I'm doing my mixture and you could just follow the directions on the back. It's pretty simple, but I'm just going to walk you through how we do this. So first we just need, we're going to go with a gallon jug. We're going to go one gallon mixture. So we're just going to start with a gallon of water. I have well water here, so I don't have any chlorine or anything in it, which is good. If you have chlorine in your water, you might want to put some vitamin C into it to neutralize it or even you could bubble it for 24 hours. So what we're going to do first is put in some neem oil. I'm using this gallon jug here with a lid because we're going to mix it all up after and also I didn't fill the water up to the top because we're going to have to add some neem oil and also some dish soap, which I'll tell you why as we progress. So first thing we're going to do is put this neem oil in and the measurement for one gallon is two tablespoons. So one to two tablespoons. So first thing I'm going to do is just, I have a half a tablespoon, so I'm going to put four of these. That'll equal two tablespoons. So we're going to put that in first and a few things about neem oil, whenever you're spraying your plants with any kind of sprays, you always want to make sure you're doing a test spray on some of the, say one plant, before you spray on all the plants. You don't want to make a mixture that is going to negatively affect your plants and spray everything and lose them at once. So make sure you're always testing your sprays first. So there's two tablespoons of neem oil in one gallon of water. So now I'm going to just shake it up because I want to show you something. This is oil and water and as everybody knows, oil and water does not mix. So what happens when we mix the oil and water is all the oil is just going to go move its way back up to the top essentially, as you can see, and bubble up there. That's not what we want. We want it all mixing together because if we're going around with a sprayer, the sprayer is going to take it from the bottom and it's just going to be water. You're not going to have the neem oil mixed in. So the instructions say we want to add some dish soap, just standard dish soap, ones without fragrances as plain and natural as you can get it. And this one says two, I believe it's two teaspoons per gallon, but we're not really worried about that exact amount. What we want to do is make sure we put enough dish soap in that the two, the oil and water start to mix. So this acts as like a emulsifier or a wetting agent. Now we'll mix this up after we put some soap in and we'll start to notice that the oil and water are blending together better. So then we want to wait like 15, 20, 30 seconds to see if the oil is going to bubble up at the top. Once we know that the oil is not bubbling up at the top anymore and the mixture is all, you know, staying together evenly, then we can start putting it into our sprayer and spraying it onto our plants. So we can still see we've got some oil up here that's sitting and you can see, you can see, especially on this side. So we need a little more soap. And the soap, you can even just use plain soap as a spray against some of your insects. We'll just mix up a little more. And your, your instructions on your Neem oil bottle, that's what's going to be what you're going to want to go by. So that's basically what I'm going by roughly. So that looks like a good amount of oil. We'll let that sit for like 20 or 30 seconds and then if that's good, we'll go spray that onto the plants. There we go. We got our Neem oil all mixed up with our soap. We're going to pour it into this sprayer. There we go. We'll save this bottle to mix next time. Now we'll just pump this up and we'll move over and we're going to be spraying our potatoes right here because we have the Colorado, Colorado potato beetle. One of the reasons I'm spraying this on my potatoes is because I read that it'll help prevent the eggs from hatching and the larvae from molting for the Colorado potato beetles. So we want to make sure we're getting the undersides of the leaves too. This is also going to help with some of the fungicide issues, the Neem oil. So the Neem oil isn't going to actually kill the potato beetles but it will stop the spread. It'll stop them from eating and it'll kill a lot of their young. So it should really slow down the issues. And we'll just make sure we spray it on the top side and underside of leaves. One other thing I need to mention that's super important to all of you is you don't want to be doing what I'm doing right here. You don't want to spray Neem oil when the sun is out. The best spray time to spray your plants with Neem oil, any spray, is going to be in the really early morning or later in the evening. The only reason I'm doing this is just to give you an idea of what I would do because you're not going to be able to see it as well in the morning or the night. So make sure you're spraying your stuff at the right time and always test spray your stuff before you spray it on everything. So I can see a lot of these issues here and the Colorado potato beetle, you'll notice it a lot of times you'll see little orange eggs and stuff or yellowish eggs on the bottom sides of the leaves. So we want to make sure we're spraying and get rid of that. So this issue is, you can see it's moved along a little bit already. We've got some beetles right here. That's one that I came by yesterday and crushed it. You can see it's died. So we want to make sure we're preventing any more spreading of that. This year is the first year I'm trying Neem oil on the Colorado potato beetle but I read on the UMass website that it has good efficacy against it. So we're going to try it out. If this doesn't work really well and I'm not super happy with the results, there's another thing I'm going to try. It's called BTSD. It's basically a bacteria, a beneficial bacteria that we'll use to kill some of those Colorado potato beetles. But I want to wash my hands real quick because Tuck looks like he needs a snack and a little water. So I just want to make sure I got all the Neem oil off my hands and stuff. Another nice reason it's good having this detergent, this dish soap here. So I'm just going to wash that off. I bet he's probably thirsty too. Tuck, you want a drink, boy? Thirsty boy? Let me get all the soap off first, boy. There you go, boy. So it's getting hot out here. Like I said, it's the first day of summer. Tuck's doing what he can to stay out here. He's digging his holes. We keep getting him water, but it's heating up even the things of water. So we're trying to make sure he's drinking enough and we're going to grab him a quick little snack that we'll both grab. Want a little carrot, boy? So maybe we'll see if we got a nice carrot over here. This raised bed is doing so good. I mean, these carrots are the biggest carrots and the best carrots I think I ever grew. Look at that baby. Look at that thing. That's what you love to see. Tuck's going to enjoy this one. I know I am too. So we're going to grab this and just wash it off. It's a big one. There you go, boy. We'll let him go and I'll have this one. Another thing I wanted to mention is when you're out spraying your stuff, you have to make sure, especially when you're using something like this, the oils. You want to make sure you're continually shaking your sprayer as you're moving because you want to make sure you're agitating everything in here to make sure you've got a good, clean, even mixture still while you're doing this. So again, shake that sprayer while you're out here. Also, when you're spraying things like neem oil, your plants at different times of the year can take different amounts. So for instance, in the spring when the leaves are thick and strong, they can take a higher dosage of neem oil than when the plants are weaker in the hot, hot summer in the middle when the leaves are just a little softer and they're wilting. So you want to make sure you're doing the right sprays at the right times. This neem oil, you can come out and do it on a 7 to 10 day ratio. So these Colorado potato beetles, they're not going to be killed by just one spraying. They're going to come back a number of times. So you want to make sure you're out here every 7 to 10 days if needed to make sure you're continually spraying these. Another reason that I love using neem oil is because it's not going to harm my beneficial insects. Most of the insects it's going to affect is a lot of the ones that are eating the leaves and eating the plant. So something like your cabbage loopers, it'll even work on that. But this year for my brassicas, I decided to try something different, a spray I've never used before and it's worked incredibly. I'm going to bring it to you now. This year my brassicas look better than they ever have for a number of reasons and one of them, I think, is because of one of the sprays I'm using. This spray, it's non-toxic to mammals. It doesn't harm any of your beneficials and it goes after specific pests and specific insects. Another thing is you can use it up to the day harvest and it's really just a bacteria. It's called Bt, Bacillus thurigenesis. This Bt spray, this bacteria, it's extremely effective against these cabs loopers and a number of other caterpillars. Like I said, it's very specific. A few weeks ago, my cabbages, they had a lot of the worms on them and I did what I could to prevent it. But once it got to a point that I really couldn't keep up, what I did was I came out and I sprayed these on the plants. One reason I love this is the way it attacks the plants or the pest. It doesn't really attack them. So what happens is it gets on the leaves and essentially in the leaves and then the cabbages eat the leaves and then it, I meant the cabbage loopers, they eat the leaves and it negatively affects their digestive system and basically causes them to die. So this is something that you're going to have to do more than once. So basically, I sprayed all these, I got rid of all the cabbage loopers but then, you know, seven to ten days later maybe, you're going to see all the other cabbage whiteflies coming and laying more eggs. So this may be something that you have to do a few times. I've only used it once so far and I think it's had a great effect but I may use it in a few more days if I start to see some more issues. I'm not going to use it today though because it's supposed to rain. You want to make sure using these sprays early in the morning or at night, not before rain too. This bacteria, this product, this should work for your tomato hornworms too. So just read the back, the instructions and that'll guide you. The way I see this being used, it's like using nature to fight nature. Almost common how we brought in some of those ladybugs or we brought in the praying mantis. So we're just trying to use any kind of like biological forms and stuff and still try to make it as naturally as we can while still getting good harvests. Now, let's move to the third spray that I'm using in the garden this year to keep it pest and disease free. And this one ties into a video that I made a couple months ago. We're going to be making worm compost tea. The first thing we're going to need to make worm compost tea is worm castings or worm compost. You don't have to use worm compost, you can use regular compost. Again, this is just tying back to a video where we made these compost bins. Not because we were going to try to use all this worm compost in the garden and fill the whole garden with it, but we wanted to make this worm compost tea and get the most out of it. So when we make worm compost tea, this is just going to proliferate all the bacteria and stuff in here and just make it even better. So the first thing we want to do is fill up a five gallon bucket with water. And we want to make sure we've got a pretty clean bucket because we want the sprayer pretty clean too. So we're going to fill this bucket up with water and we want to make sure that if we have city water and there's a lot of chlorine or chloramine in it, we make sure that we fill this up at least 24 hours before and allow a bubbler in there to aerate all the water to make sure to get a lot of oxygen into it, to remove a lot of the chlorine. Or we can use some vitamin C and add that vitamin C powder and that'll kind of neutralize the chlorine in there. So we want to make sure it's clean and chlorine free. Fortunately, I'm in a well, so we don't have to really worry about the chlorine. So let's get this bucket filled. There we go, five gallon bucket all filled. And make sure again, if you have city water or a lot of chlorine that you're neutralizing that chlorine. Next, we're just going to make a teabag essentially to hold the compost in. This is an old shirt. It doesn't look old, but it actually is old and stained. So I'm going to cut this up and make a nice teabag. When you're making a teabag, you just want to make sure it's something that is relatively porous, but the stuff's not going to go through because we want to make sure it's filtered so that we're not clogging up our sprayer. We're just going to lay this out like this. Next, we're going to fill it up with our worm castings. So for a five gallon bucket, anywhere from two to four, I would say, cups of worm castings. You don't want to go crazy and use more than you have to. So we're just going to scoop out one cup here. And it's okay if I get a few worms in there. Two, try not to get a lot of worms. Three, and then we'll just do four. It should be good. And I never keep my worms outside like this. They're always inside in the garage where it's cool and dark. I'm just out here doing this for demonstration purposes. Same thing with your compost tea. You don't want to make it in the sun. Next, we're just going to make this into a tea bag like you would any bag. And there are plenty of compost tea bags you can buy online and stuff, but we're just going to make this makeshift one because I think this is something anybody can really make on their own. Now we need to tie it off. I'm just going to use a zip tie. I found that to be easiest. As you can see, this is porous. We're going to allow the water to move through this, but it's not going to let all the debris fall in. Next, I'm going to zip tie it, but I'm going to have a little trick I put in. First, I'm going to put a zip tie this way. Then I'm going to take a zip tie and tie it this way. So I'm going to take this zip tie and close it off so the stuff doesn't spill out. In the process, locking in this other zip tie too. And I did that so that I could close this off and then tie a string to it to hold it. Now let's move this into our bucket just like you would any regular tea bag. Drop it in. Let it start steeping. You can already see some of the stuff coming off of it. I even will go through and just, you know, shake a little of the castings out. You'll see the brown coming. And then I could just take a string or another zip tie, wrap it like this on the end, and just let it kind of steep in there like that. So you could do this, but this is just a basic, basic version. What you really want to do, let me move you over to the one that I've been steeping for 24 hours. So you want to steep these things for 24 hours. Here's one I started yesterday. And you'll notice, look at the aeration in there. So I've got an air stone at the bottom. This is providing the aeration with just a little simple aquarium pump. And when we provide this aeration, it's going to provide oxygen, which is going to make all the bacteria in here multiply because we also put in one more thing that I'm going to show you real quick. And that is organic cane sugar or molasses. When we put this sugar or this molasses in, this is like food for the bacteria. Now I'm providing oxygen and food. So the bacteria is going to proliferate, proliferate. There's going to be so many more bacteria than when we started. So let me get a little sugar and show you. So like I mentioned, we want to feed some of these bacteria. So I'm going to use organic cane sugar. Organic cane sugar or molasses will work. Molasses will work better, but I already have this. So two tablespoons per five gallons basically. And this is that mixture I'm making today. And I'll be able to use this tomorrow. So after we do that, we'll put the bubbler in as I'll show you. Right here, we'll bring this bucket over. All ready. We'll put this inside though in the shade. We'll make sure we're getting a nice steeping. And then we'll move this bubbler into here. That'll be tomorrow and this is today. So let's get this into the sprayer and actually start spraying it onto our plants. All this biological bacteria, such good stuff. So here's yesterday's worm castings compost tea. We're going to pour it into here and then spray it on a bunch of our plants. There's not a lot of big sticks or anything in here because we filtered all of it. We don't want it blocking up our sprayer. And you'll notice we still have this here. We'll just re-compost this because there's still a lot of good stuff in here. There's probably some worms if they survived still in here. Now we'll just spray this onto our plants in the garden. So we've got that compost tea all made. We're going to spray it. And some of the great things about the compost tea, it's got so many beneficial microbes in it. And also it creates almost like this, this like microbial film around the outside of like the leaves and stuff. That just is like a preventative for a lot of things. And it's also soluble nutrients for a lot of the plants. I'm not going to spray a lot of this stuff now because just like I mentioned before, now is not the time. Plus I see a lot of bees and little insects moving around here. I don't want to, you know, deter them, negatively affect them or anything, even though this compost tea will probably help them. Before I let you go, I just wanted to mention two little bonus tips, stuff that I use sometimes in the garden. One of them, and you can use too. I'm sure you have it around. It's just that simple household soap. You can spray that on a lot of your insects. That'll like dry out a lot of them and basically suffocate them in a sense because they breathe through their skin. A number of them. And another thing you could do that's super easy is just diatomaceous earth. You can put that around the base of a lot of your plants and it's so sharp and jagged, it'll cut into a lot of those insects. So there's a lot of different remedies we could do. You just have to find out what's, you know, best for your particular location and your particular plant. That's today's video growers. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I hope some of the information and the things that I shared in this video bring you true value and you're able to go out there and apply them and they increase your harvests. I really think that they will. That's why, that's why I made this video. And when you're out there through the years, through the months, through the days, make sure you're always journaling what you're doing, especially when it comes to pest management. Because two years from now, three years from now, it would be nice to know that June 20th, always, that I've always had the Colorado potato beetles come or something of that, you know, essence, the same idea. If you enjoyed the video though, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, share with your friends. Don't forget to check out the merch down low. And whenever you're shopping on Amazon, do not forget to use our Amazon affiliate link. All the products that I'm using in this video, I'm going to put the links down at the bottom. Again, use those links. Doesn't cost you anything. Gives me and Tuck just a little piece. We'll be back at you with another one real soon. Tuck and James, we out.