- 2 days ago
A homemade garlic and chili garden spray may help deter soft-bodied pests like aphids, spider mites, mealybugs, young caterpillars and whiteflies—without relying on a store-bought pesticide. Learn how to crush the ingredients, steep them in water, strain the mixture and add mild soap so the spray coats leaves more evenly.
This practical natural pest control guide also explains what the spray won’t handle, why repeated applications may be needed, and how midday heat can scorch foliage. Apply in the cool of morning or evening, including under leaves, and avoid spraying blossoms while pollinators are visiting. Explore DIY organic gardening, homemade plant pest remedies and vegetable garden care for a more informed approach to protecting plants.
This practical natural pest control guide also explains what the spray won’t handle, why repeated applications may be needed, and how midday heat can scorch foliage. Apply in the cool of morning or evening, including under leaves, and avoid spraying blossoms while pollinators are visiting. Explore DIY organic gardening, homemade plant pest remedies and vegetable garden care for a more informed approach to protecting plants.
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00:00You walk out to your garden of a morning, and the tomato plant that stood perfect yesterday is riddled with
00:06holes,
00:07the leaves chewed to lace, and you know that something came in the night and ate its fill while you
00:13slept.
00:14Now I am going to give you a liquid you can make from three things in your kitchen for about
00:18a dollar,
00:19that you spray on of an evening, and within a day the soft little pests that did that damage are
00:25driven off or dead,
00:26and the bees and the ladybugs and the butterflies are left entirely unharmed.
00:32It is no fairy tale and no gimmick, it is a plain old farmer's remedy from long before there was
00:38a bottle of poison to buy,
00:40and it works because of what is locked inside two common things, the garlic and the hot pepper.
00:47But I will tell you straight, there is one mistake most folk make with this that ruins the whole batch
00:53and scorches their plants,
00:55and I will make sure you do not make it.
00:58Stay with me to the end, for that one mistake is the difference between a remedy that works and one
01:04that does you harm.
01:06Let me tell you first why the poison in a bottle is a losing game, for it will help you
01:11see why the old way is better.
01:13When you spray a harsh chemical, it kills most of the bugs, yes, but the few toughest ones live,
01:20and those tough ones breed, and their young are tough like them, and in a few short turns of the
01:26season,
01:27that same spray does nothing at all to the bugs, and you must buy a stronger one.
01:32And worse, the poison does not kill only the pest.
01:36It kills the ladybug that was eating your aphids by the hundred, and the bee that pollinates a good third
01:42of all you eat,
01:43so that in the end your garden has no defenders left, only pests, and stronger ones than before.
01:50The old folk had a saying that the quick fix is the slow disaster, and nowhere is it truer than
01:57here.
01:58I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com.
02:02The book is the long version. If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again.
02:08So here is the first of the two things, and it is the garlic.
02:12Now a whole clove of garlic sitting on the counter is near odorless and does nothing.
02:18But the moment you crush it, the moment you break it open, something happens,
02:23for the crushing lets two things inside the clove meet and make a third,
02:28a sharp, biting, volatile thing that rises off the crushed garlic as that powerful smell you know.
02:35And that sharp gas is a weapon.
02:38For a bug does not find your plant with its eyes, it finds it by smell,
02:43nosing through the air for the particular scent of the thing it eats.
02:46And when that cloud of crushed garlic sharpness hangs about your plant,
02:51it drowns out the plant's own smell and scrambles the bug's nose entirely,
02:56so that the aphid and the moth simply cannot find the plant they came for.
03:00The plant goes invisible to them.
03:03And for a bug that does land, the garlic is a foul irritant that spoils its appetite
03:09and makes the leaf a hateful place to be.
03:12And here is the heart of why it is safe.
03:14That same garlic that seasons your supper is harmless to you and your dog and your cat,
03:20death to the soft little pest and nothing to you.
03:24Nature's own poison that only poisons what it should.
03:28The second thing is the hot chili pepper, and it adds the fire to the garlic's shield.
03:34You know what a hot pepper does to your own mouth?
03:37Well, to a soft little insect, it is a thousand times that, pure, unbearable fire.
03:44The stuff in the pepper that burns, it fastens onto the bug
03:47and lights up its whole body with the feeling of being a flame,
03:51so that it stops eating at once, abandons the leaf, and flees.
03:56And in a good strong dose, it does more than drive them off.
04:00It damages the soft creatures and kills them outright.
04:03And like the garlic, it leaves not a trace of harm on the vegetable you will eat.
04:08So the two together make a complete defense.
04:11The garlic is the invisible shield that hides the plant and scrambles the scent.
04:17The chili is the fire that punishes anything bold enough to land anyway.
04:22One hides, the other burns, and between them most of the soft pests cannot get a foothold.
04:30Now I must be honest with you about what this will and will not do,
04:34for I will not sell you a wonder, and the honest truth is the most useful thing I can give
04:40you.
04:41This spray works on the soft-bodied pests, and against those it is a marvel,
04:46the aphid, the spider mite, the mealy bug, the young soft caterpillar, the white fly,
04:53those it drives off or kills.
04:56But it will not touch a hard-shelled beetle, for the fire cannot get through his armor,
05:02and he will sit on your leaf and shrug at it.
05:05It will not touch a slug or a snail, for their slime sheds it right off.
05:11And it will not reach a bug that bores deep inside the stem or the fruit,
05:15for it is a surface spray and cannot follow him in.
05:19So do not believe the loud promise that one spray kills every pest overnight, for it does not.
05:26It handles the soft ones, which are most of your trouble,
05:30and for the armored and the hidden ones you need other ways.
05:34Knowing that up front is what makes you an effective gardener instead of a disappointed one.
05:40Now here is how you make it, and it is almost embarrassingly simple.
05:44You take two or three whole heads of garlic, not cloves, heads, which is a good twenty cloves or so,
05:52and five to ten hot red chilies, the red ripe ones, for they carry far more fire than the green.
05:59Now put on your gloves for this part, and keep your hands from your eyes,
06:03for the pepper oil and the eye are a meeting nobody forgets.
06:08Leave the seeds and the white ribs in the chilies, for that is where most of the fire lives.
06:13Chop it all rough, then crush it or blend it hard, for here is the thing that makes a strong
06:19brew or a weak one.
06:21You must break every last cell wall open, for the garlic's sharp gas and the pepper's fire are locked inside
06:28the cells,
06:29and do nothing until they are let out.
06:32A lazy chop gives a weak spray.
06:35A hard crushing, down near to a paste, gives you all the strength there is.
06:40Put the crushed mess in a jar, and pour a quart of water over it, about four cups, and if
06:46you can, use rain water or settled water,
06:49rather than straight from the tap, for the hard minerals in tap water can bind up the pepper's fire and
06:55weaken it,
06:56a small thing that makes a real difference.
06:59Seal the jar and set it in a cool dark cupboard to steep a day or two, for the steeping
07:05is what draws every drop of strength out of the pulp and into the water,
07:09and a brew used too soon is a brew half as strong as it might be.
07:14Then strain it through a cloth into your sprayer, and squeeze the pulp hard, for there is good medicine left
07:20in it.
07:21And here is the one ingredient most folk leave out and must not, a teaspoon of mild soap, a plain
07:28gentle dish soap, or a castile soap.
07:31The soap is not for cleaning.
07:34The garlic and pepper oils will not mix into water on their own, they float apart, and the soap is
07:40what binds them together into one even liquid.
07:43More than that, the soap breaks the skin of the water so the spray clings to the waxy leaf and
07:49coats the bug instead of beating up and rolling off onto the ground.
07:53Without the soap, half your spray is wasted on the dirt. With it, every drop sticks where it belongs.
08:00And if you want to make it stronger yet, you may add a couple of teaspoons of neem oil, which
08:06is a real and accepted old garden oil that does a further thing.
08:10It breaks the breeding of the insects so the next generation never hatches.
08:15The garlic and chili knock down the pests that are there now, and the neem sees to the ones that
08:21would come next.
08:22Now the mistake, the one I promised you, the one that ruins the whole batch, and it is all in
08:28the timing.
08:29This spray carries natural oils, and if you spray it in the heat of a high sunny noon, those oils
08:36catch the sun's heat on the leaf, and the pepper turns on the leaf's own green.
08:40And instead of guarding your plant, the spray scorches it, and you wake to wilted burnt leaves, and you blame
08:47the recipe.
08:48The recipe was fine. The timing was wrong.
08:52So the first rule is this, spray only in the cool, early in the morning before the sun is high,
08:58or in the evening after it begins to set.
09:02Never in the hot middle of the day.
09:04The second rule, spray the undersides of the leaves, lift the foliage and get up underneath.
09:11For that is where most of the pests hide and feed and lay their eggs.
09:16And a spray on the tops alone is like locking the front door and leaving the back wide open.
09:22And the third rule, and this is where folk give up too soon, do it again every four or five
09:29days, and always after a rain.
09:32For this is no permanent chemical that bonds hard to the leaf and lingers for weeks.
09:38It is a natural thing, and that is its virtue and its price both.
09:42For the same gentleness that spares your bees means the rain washes it off, and the sun and time break
09:50it down.
09:51So one spraying is not a cure, it is one blow in a campaign.
09:56And it is the faithful repeating of it, every few days through the worst of the trouble, that thins the
10:02pests down and keeps them down.
10:05The man who sprays once and expects it to last a month will be disappointed and will wrongly call it
10:12useless.
10:13The man who sprays faithfully every few days will have the cleanest garden on the road.
10:19Spray till the leaf just begins to drip, thorough but not flooding, and keep at it.
10:25And one more plain word of care, so you do right by your friends in the garden.
10:30Though this spray is far gentler than any poison, do not go spraying it straight into the open flowers where
10:37the bees are working,
10:38for while it is wet, it could trouble them.
10:42Spray the leaves and the stems where the pests are, leave the blossoms be, and the bees and the ladybugs
10:48and the butterflies will go on with their good work unharmed.
10:52That is the whole beauty of this over a bottle of poison.
10:57The poison kills everything it touches, friend and foe alike.
11:01This takes aim at the invaders and leaves your allies standing.
11:06That is the difference between a weapon and a plan.
11:09My grandmother made this very brew every summer, a jar of crushed garlic and the little red peppers she grew
11:17along the fence,
11:18steeping on the windowsill with that sharp smell you could catch from the doorway.
11:22I remember her straining it of an evening and going out to spray the bean leaves in the cool, lifting
11:29each one to get underneath.
11:30I asked her once why she did not just buy the spray from the store like the neighbor did.
11:36She said,
11:38Child, the neighbor's spray kills his aphids and his ladybugs both,
11:42and come next month his aphids are back and his ladybugs are not, so he buys again.
11:48Mine kills the aphids and leaves the ladybugs to eat the ones I missed,
11:53and it cost me a few cloves of garlic I grew myself.
11:56She said the store spray fights your battle for a week and then hands it back to you worse.
12:02The old brew makes the garden fight alongside you.
12:05I did not understand her then. I understand her now.
12:09So let me say plainly who gains by you believing you must buy a bottle to keep the bugs off.
12:16The great pesticide trade gains, for its whole business runs on selling you a spray that kills the pest and
12:23the pest's natural enemies both,
12:25so the pest comes back worse the next season and you must buy again, and again, a cycle with no
12:32end and a fine profit in it.
12:34It is not that anyone schemed it so, not a plot, only a plain fact.
12:40A thing made of crushed garlic and chili for a dollar cannot be patented, cannot be trademarked,
12:47cannot be sold to you on a subscription, so no company will ever advertise it.
12:52But it gets passed along all the same, from one gardener to the next, from a grandmother to a boy,
12:58the way the good knowledge always has.
13:01Now tell me this in the comments. What soft pest is worst in your garden this year?
13:07The aphid? The spider mite? The white fly? The mealy bug?
13:11And I will tell you straight whether this brew will handle it,
13:14or whether you have got one of the armored or hidden kinds that wants another way.
13:19And tell me as well, do you grow your own garlic and peppers?
13:22For if you do, this spray costs you nothing at all but the making.
13:27Next time I will show you how to grow those very hot peppers in a pot on a sunny sill,
13:32so that you can raise your own fire for this brew and never buy a chili,
13:37and have them fresh and red the whole year round.
13:41But for now, when the pests chew your garden down in the night,
13:45do not reach for the poison that kills your friends along with your foes.
13:50Crush a little garlic and chili, let it steep, and spray it in the cool of the evening.
13:56The people who built this country with their hands knew that,
14:00and we are only just starting to remember it.
14:03The two months after the boat went out and started out,
14:03The sky is going to be in the back and forth,