Homemade Pest Oil/White Oil

Why buy Pest Oil from Bunnings or your local garden shop when you can make it yourself?

Oil based sprays are very useful in controlling a wide range of insect pests in the garden. Pests like scale, aphids, smooth skinned caterpillars, mites and even young grasshoppers suffocate when their bodies are covered with oil.

You can even use oil sprays to deter the citrus leaf miner. .

Heres how to make an oil base spray.

1. In a blender, combine 2 cups of vegetable oil with ½ cup of dishwashing liquid. Blend it up until it’s well mixed.  This is your concentrate and can be stored in a jar. Be sure to label it and include the dilution rate on the label.
2. To prepare the concentrate for use, dilute 1 tablespoon in a litre of water, mix it well and spray the pest as well as both sides of the foliage thoroughly. 
3. Always follow this dilution rate, because you can burn the foliage if it’s too strong and there are a few other rules; don’t apply it in hot weather and avoid using it on plants with hairy foliage as well as ferns, palms and cycads as this can also cause leaf burn.
4. Regular applications of this easy to make oil based spray will help protect your plants from many common pests found in the garden.

Other home made remedies:

All-round Insecticide

Chop four large onions, two cloves of garlic, and four hot chillies. Mix them together and cover with warm, soapy water and leave it to stand overnight. Strain off that liquid and add it to five litres of water to create an all-round insecticide. 

Pesticide

Crush a whole bulb of garlic and cover with vegetable oil. After two days, strain off the liquid, add a couple of drops of dishwashing liquid and use one millilitre of concentrate to one litre of water. 

Slug and Snail Spray

You can make a simple spray very cheaply that dissolves slugs and snails without affecting your plants.

This spray simply consists of 1 part ammonia to 4 parts water in a spray bottle, with a dash of liquid soap to make it stick better on the pests. One or two squirts and they dissolve into a foaming green sludge. The slugs are gone instantly because they don’t have a shell to protect themselves, the snails might need a second squirt to coat them well in the spray. Set the nozzle of the spray bottle to a narrow jet so you can target them precisely and give them a good dose of the stuff.

You will need:

• Plastic spray bottle
• 1 teaspoon (5ml) of pure liquid soap (use pure organic castile soap, made from olive oil if you want to keep it all natural)
• 100ml of Cloudy Ammonia
• 400ml of water

I use a 500ml spray bottle with measurements on the side, which makes the process really easy. Pour 100ml of Cloudy Ammonia into the spray bottle, add 400ml of water, then add a dash of liquid soap to make the mixture stick better to pests. Shake bottle lightly, and you’re ready to hunt these nasty garden molluscs!

Best time to hunt these critters is just when it gets dark, or after it has just rained, which is when they crawl out for a feed. Grab a torch/flashlight, and look for them, if you see them, spray them. Do this over several nights and it puts a serious dent in their population.