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Neem Oil For Plants: Protect Your Grow From Pests
Neem oil for plants is a great way to protect your grow from pesky pest infestation. It’s been useed widely by growers across the world as an organic alternative to harsh pesticides, and can work wonders for your grow in terms of prevention and to put a stop to an outbreak.
Read about what neem oil is and how you can use neem oil for your plants to ensure a pest free crop.
Why Do Growers Prefer Natural Pesticides From Plants Over Synthetic Pesticides?
Although synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are efficient in controlling pests both in small home gardens and large agricultural fields, they cause adverse effects on the natural ecosystems.
This is one of the main reasons people are now shifting to natural fertilizers, organic gardening, and pesticides. Since insects feed on plants, many plants, including the Neem tree, have developed effective chemical mechanisms of defending themselves from destructive insects and pests.
The good news is that with our advanced technology, we have been able to extract some of the most effective and efficient insecticides from plants that are safe for humans both in the short term and the long term.
Can Neem Oil Be Used As A Pesticide?
Are you aware that the Neem tree, whose scientific name is Azadirachta indica and native to India, portrays great versatility in controlling plant pests? For instance, in India, the tree is considered a sacred tree, particularly due to its indigenous Indian medicine.
Neem oil, which is extracted from the Neem plant’s seed, is a highly-priced ingredient used in making both modern and traditional Neem remedies such as insect repellents and cosmetics. Our main focus will be on the properties of Neem oil that makes it effective insect repellants.
How Is Neem Oil Extracted?
Neem oil is mainly extracted from the seed kernels since it has about 50 % of the entire seed weed and has the highest concentration of need oil.
The Neem cake, which mainly comprises kernel remains, is very effective gardening and agriculture product since it is used as a fertilizer and a pesticide.
Besides, the Neem cake is used as an antibiotic in natural livestock farming to treat fungal, parasitic, and bacterial diseases in animals.
Is Neem Oil Effective In Killing Pests?
Yes, Neem oil is known to have extremely adverse effects on many plant-feeding insect species. For instance, Neem oil can kill over 200 insect species such as aphids, bugs, thrips, mites, fungus gnats, cabbage worms, and whiteflies, armyworms, mushroom flies, locusts, leaf-feeding beetles, among others.
Neem oil is a very effective pesticide because it has a chemical compound known as Azadirachtin, which is a natural insecticide. Besides, this chemical component is an effective insect repellent that interferes with the pests’ growth and feeding habit. This means that once an insect consumes Azadirachtin, their feeding and growth are highly reduced.
At the same time, larvae develop stunted growth, thus preventing them from reaching the adult stage, terminating the insect life cycle. Moreover, apart from interfering with the insect’s metabolism, Neem oil has a strong unpleasant aroma that repels bugs away from consuming your plants.
Pests can be a particularly bad problem if you are growing outdoors. One helpful tip is that if you are a new grower try growing your first few crops indoors.
An easy way to get started on your cannabis growing journey would be to use indoor grow tent kits to make it as foolproof as possible for your first few grows.
How To Use Neem Oil For Plants Properly
If you are looking forward to using the Neem oil on your farm, you can pick either of these two choices. One is to use commercial Neem oil agricultural products. The Neem spray is well-tested and safe to apply in your garden directly from the shop.
However, commercial Neem sprays contain less amount of Azadirachtin hence less effective than you can prepare by yourself. The other choice is making your Neem oil spray by choosing the right combination of ingredients and concentration you want to use in your garden.
However, never trustfully the safety and efficiency of these DIY formulations without testing by sampling a small portion of your garden for about 24 hours to see what happens after spraying.
How To Apply Neem Oil Spray To Your Plants
Note that it is very important to test your homemade Neem oil spray on a sampled portion before embarking on applying on the entire garden. Spray your Neem oil solution on the affected leaves but not on the entire plant so that you can watch what happens within 24 hours.
If your plant responds well to the spray, you can apply it to the entire affected parts. You can use your Neem oil spray at least once per week since regular spraying acts as preventive mechanisms, which is critical if your garden is near a pest invaded region.
Remember that it is particularly important to ensure that the leaves are fully coated when using oil-based sprays. The active ingredients are completely in contact with the fungi, pests, and insects.
What Are Some Safety Guidelines When Using Neem Oil Based Sprays?
- Never apply Neem oil-based sprays in direct sunlight.
- It is not recommended to spray your plants with Neem oil sprays during extreme temperatures, either cold or hot.
- Avoid spraying plants with bad growing conditions such as those underwater shortage, overwatered, or other physical conditions since this would mean adding more damages to the plant by spraying.
- Always keep Neem oil spray away from children since it may bring other complications when ingested directly.
Basic Instructions For Spraying Neem Oil For Plants
To make a one liter, mild 0.5% concentration Neem oil spray, you will need these things:
- 250ML of warm water.
- One full teaspoon of Neem oil (5ml).
- 1-2 ml of dilute liquid soap, mild detergent, or insecticidal soap. Alternatively, use one teaspoon of soap.
Mix the soap and water in a tightly closed bottle and shake vigorously so that all the soap is completely dissolved. Add your Neem oil to the solution and continue shaking.
Make sure your solution is 0.5 to 1 % concentrated for it is the most effective for general gardening purposes.
However, you can research using a 2 % concentration spray on a severely infected area and see if it helps.
Neem Oil For Plants: The Final Verdict
Some plants, such as the Neem tree, have very useful chemical compounds that can control insect infestations and diseases in our gardens. The good thing about these naturally occurring chemical compounds is that they have little or no adverse effects on the surroundings than those chemicals in human-made pesticides.
Neem oil-based spray is a good example of safe chemical weapons for fighting against pests in our gardens. To the best of our knowledge, Neem oil’s compounds only affect the leaf-eating insects among other herbivorous animals like the nematodes.
This means that natural pesticides are far better than synthetic pesticides, resulting in animal and human being health complications.
