The word ‘poison” does not really sound too good when applied to food out of your garden that you and your family are going to consume. In truth, poison is not something you really want to consume and as a practitioner of the gardening arts I avoid using poison like poison. For no matter how hard you may try to wash the poisons off of your vegetables it will be in the back of your mind that you might not be getting rid of all the poison.
I relegate poison to only those times when nothing else is helping. Then I use a mild and also less expensive poison like Sevin. There are many home remedies for treating disease and infestations of insects and they range in effectiveness at curbing diseases and insects from none to working as well or better than main stream garden center poisons. The main items I use to treat disease and control insects are lemon juice and dish soap. I have found that lemon is a repellant to most many insects (including mosquitoes’ b the way). I have also found that dish soap is fairly effective in getting rid of worm type insects and aiding in protecting your plants from bacterial diseases. Both of these remedies are much cheaper than purchasing standard anti-bacterial and insect killing chemicals. In fact, many garden chemical companies offer their own version of soap for organic gardeners and others who are concerned with the well being of their families. Note: I like to purchase lemon scented dish soap so I’m sort of getting a bigger bang for my buck.
Of course the cheapest way of avoiding the expense of high priced poisons is to be proactive in your garden. Many people remember that as children one of their first gardening experiences was being placed in charge of picking tomato worms off of the tomato plants. Certainly hand picking insects off of your plants is the cheapest way of pest control. Cutting infected fruits, leaves and, branches from your crops should always be done to help curb the spread of bacterial diseases. Again, this is the cheapest form of disease control.
Now when it comes to controlling weeds in my vegetable garden I never use any chemicals at all. I pull out weeds and if I can’t pull them out I use a hoe to chop them out. Depending on how often it rains, you many have to pull and/or hoe weeds every week or two. Using muscle instead of poison will always be the most inexpensive way to control weeds.
Overall, you can cut back or curtail altogether the use of chemicals on you vegetable garden. This might improve not only your financial situation but it could in the long run improve on your health costs. Either way, there are ways to garden and save a fortune.
