Essential Oils and Gardening

Essential Oils and Gardening

Essential oils used in your garden can deter pests and pathogens from infecting your plants. Strong and healthy plants resist disease which will produce higher yield and more fragrant crops.  Many plants have symbiotic relationships which you can utilize by either growing the plants next to each other or by adding the essential oil of the beneficial plant to water.

Mix 6 drops of essential oil to 2 gallons of warm water stir then let it cool. Fill your watering container half full with the essential oil water then top it off with cold water, stir again and water as usual.

Companion Plants and Essential oils

Vegetables

Asparagus – Basil

Green Beans – Lavender, Basil

Broccoli – Basil, Thyme

Cabbage – Peppermint, Sage, Thyme, Clary Sage

Carrots – Sage

Cauliflower – Sage

Cucumbers – Sage

Sqash - Fennel , Sage

Peas – Geranium

Potatoes – Basil, Sage

Tomatoes – Basil

Fruit

Apples and Grapes – Lavender

Flowers

Roses – Basil, Hyssop

Round Up, it scares me I am in a garden center and I hear the sale people point to Round Up.    Glyphosate is widely used in the mistaken belief that it is harmless, safe and readily breaks down leaving no residues. Consequently, it is sprayed in public areas while people are present and by operators without protective clothing. These people are exposed to the drift of this herbicide. The facts show that Glyphosate causes a range of health problems to humans, plants and animals, it causes environmental problems and that it is highly persistent.

ScienceThe state of the universe.Jan. 29 2014 12:30 PM

The Missing Monarchs

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Monsanto’s Roundup and genetically modified crops are harming everybody’s favorite butterfly.

By Warren Cornwall Monarch butterflies in 2008 at the Sierra del Chincua sancturay in Angangueo, Mexico. The number of monarchs reaching Mexico has now reached the lowest level on record.

Photo by Mario Vazquez/AFP/Getty Images

Feeding on a weed seems like a good evolutionary bet. And for a long time, it worked well for the monarch butterfly.

The butterfly’s life cycle is exquisitely synchronized to the seasonal growth of milkweed, the only plant its larvae will eat. In a game of hopscotch, successive generations of monarchs follow the springtime emergence of milkweed from Mexico as far north as Canada. The hardy plant once flourished in grasslands, roadsides, abandoned lots, and cornfields across much of the continent. It fueled a mass migration that ended each winter with more than 60 million butterflies converging on pine forests in the Sierra Madres.

Then came Roundup.

The number of monarchs reaching Mexico has been falling for years, and it has now reached the lowest level on record. The World Wildlife Fund announced Wednesday that butterflies this winter were found in 1.7 acres across 11 sanctuaries, down from a high of 45 acres in 1996. If you want to know a main reason why, look no further than your corn chips and ethanol-spiked gasoline

Tomorrow I will talk about Neem Essential Oil.

Neem Essential Oil a GREAT natural pesticide for you garden As a natural pesticide: Using neem derivatives for managing pests is a non-violent approach to controlling pests. Neem products work by intervening at several stages of the insect's life. They may not kill the pest instantaneously but incapacitate it in several ways. Neem very subtly employs effects such as repellence, feeding and ovipositional deterrence, growth inhibition, mating disruption, chemo-sterilization, etc..

Contact me if you are interest Neem Essential Oil