Essential Oils for the Garden

Photo of my own personal organic gardener and husband of nearly 21 years, Dave Johns, our youngest son who at 9 years of age is the biggest gardening enthusiast of all of our children, and our faithful and sweet doggie Brandi.  :)

My wonderful husband Dave has been heading up a big garden for us this year.  We always garden without pesticides, but with mixed results.  (some years our plants get eaten up)  This year Dave did some research and decided to try out a combination of essential oils to help keep the bugs away.  It worked really, really well in our garden and in our fruit trees and grapevines, so now we'd like to tell you about it!


Just combine: 


16 drops tea tree oil
16 drops clove oil
 and 32 drops peppermint oil
with a gallon of water.


Dave used a gallon size sprayer to combine all of these items and spray the garden, trees, etc.  He learned that it wasn't really necessary to spray directly on the plants, but instead he generally sprayed the entire garden area.  He saw a dramatic reduction of bugs in the area, and our fruit trees are doing better than they have in years.


He mentioned that he hasn't seen any bugs dying from this spray.  We don't want to hurt bees, earthworms, or other beneficial garden friends.  (I don't even want to kill non-beneficial bugs!)  We just want to let the plants grow so we can eat them without sharing with buggy critters!  :)  Hopefully this mixture is just creating a less appealing spot for bugs to hang out, without hurting anybody.  We have had a bumper crop of zucchini, summer squash, banana peppers, kale, swiss chard, green beans, and bell peppers so far, and nothing tastes like essential oils, which was actually a concern of mine.


I hope this is helpful to you.  If you try it, let us know how it works for you.  OK?