Friday, May 13, 2011

Organic Pesticide

I've read that all the wonderful Paw Paw trees in our magical little hollow contain a natural and potent pesticide. Of course, the articles are about making extract in a lab with string solvents like industrial grade ethanol and such which, in my opinion, goes beyond what could be considered "organic". I have also read, however, that organic gardeners use the leaves, stems, twigs, and bark to make their own natural and effective pesticides.

What I can't find is any sort of recipe or anything on exactly how the hell they manage this.

The organic pesticide recipes I have found involve mainly capsaicin (the stuff that makes peppers and onions and such hot). In these recipes, you simply cut the ingredients up small, blend them into a paste, steep said paste in water for a bit, strain, add a bit of vegetable oil and a dash of dish soap to break up the surface tension of the water and there you are.

I figure this should work with the paw paw parts as well so that is what I'm trying. I intend to also make a capsaicin based solution as well and testing them against one another. I will post again in the future once I have some conclusive results.

DSC_0057

DSC_0059


UPDATE:

The first test of the organic pesticide; we found a spotted up leaf on one of our watermelons. Upon further inspection, we found a striped cucumber beetle just going to town on it. We filled a spray bottle with our paw paw leaf solution, gave it a spritz and WOW! the beetle didn't fall over and die or anything, but it DID start running around in circles and then jumped off the leaf, to be seen no more!

No comments:

Post a Comment