The Best Essential Oils For Home Gardening
Using the best essential oils for gardening is, well, essential! In today's world, we are very aware of the harm that pesticides and insecticides do, not just to bugs and insects but also to humans.
If at all possible, it is best to use products that will not cause harm if they get in the plants, soil, or water source in your garden.
Along with plants, protection for your hands is also a good idea when digging in the soil. Not only will you keep your hands from any yuck that might be in the dirt, but you will also avoid having to scrub your hands with a scrub brush to get the soil from underneath your fingernails.
Yet gardening is all about digging in the dirt, but there is a better way to work with the soil using a pair of Gardening Gloves with fingertip claws.
These gloves are the perfect way to turn the soil, get out the pesky weeds, and tend to your plants while keeping your hands protected.
You will be able to dig in the dirt as needed yet have clean hands to answer your cell or tend to a child.
These gardening gloves will be as essential to tending your garden as the essential oils are to keep pests away from your plants.
Essential Oils For Gardening Cover A Wide Range Of Issues
There are many essential oils; they are readily available and help alleviate a wide range of issues without being toxic. Most essential oils will last a year or more when kept in their original container.
Essential oils can cover a multitude of issues that you find when gardening. Here are some of the issues you can use oils to help alleviate.
Fungus Control
Use essential oil from rosemary, oregano, thyme, melaleuca, peppermint, clove, and cinnamon to suppress fungal infections. Any of these oils will help against fungus.
Insect Repellant
The essential oils that can be used for repelling insects include rosemary, lavender, and lemongrass oils. Also useful are peppermint, spearmint, and orange oils.
Rodent Control
If you find that you have mice or chipmunks coming to nibble on plants in your garden, place cotton balls that have peppermint oil sprinkled on them near where you have seen them burrow.
They don't like the smell of the mint and will relocate. Squirrels will also avoid areas with the scent of peppermint.
Snail and Slug Control
Slugs and snails can damage your plants, but they don't like the smell or taste of cedarwood, garlic, orange, or pine oils.
Spray the oil and water mixture around the base of the plants where you have seen these pests.
Stray Animals
Cats don't like the smell of rosemary. You can spray mulch with the mixture, or you can soak some strips of cloth with a rosemary and water mixture and hang them among your plants.
Dogs, with their sensitive noses, dislike anything with a pepper scent. You can use pepper oil on strips of cloth, but don't overdo it, as it tends to be strong smelling.
Use Essential Oils To Attract Pollinators
Essential oils will repel unwanted insects, but they will also attract the good guys. If you want to bring natural pollinators to your garden, use orange blossom, sage, yarrow, lavender, or catmint essential oils.
Use these oils in the same way that you would use them if wanting to repel pesky insects.
Essential Peppermint Oil Is A Great All-Around Remedy For Your Garden
There are numerous essential oils, and they all have their function, but if you needed to choose just one essential oil, peppermint would be the one.
This oil will discourage insects from coming into your garden. The peppermint oil does this in two ways. First, it masks the scent of your growing vegetables. Second, it is an irritant to insects.
Peppermint oil covers a wide range of uses, and it is an oil that you won't mind smelling in the garden. Peppermint oil will deter ants, spider mites, rodents and squash vine borer.
To increase your success with this spray, make sure that you spray every five days as part of your routine in caring for your garden.
Those pesky insects locate plants both visibly and by scent. So when you are working in your garden and break or prune the plants, the plants release an odor.
Wind and heavy rain can also damage plant leaves just enough that scents are released. Even without breakage, plants all have their own distinct smell. The smell is what attracts insects.
Using peppermint oils sprayed around your garden plants and on the soil will mask the scent of your plants.
How To Mix Peppermint Oil
If you have a small herb garden or plants that you take outdoors in the summer, you can mix up a small batch of peppermint oil in this manner:
- One drop of peppermint oil to 2 ounces of water.
- Put this in a spray bottle to use with your plants.
- Make sure to shake the bottle often to keep the oil dispersed throughout the water.
For a larger garden:
- Use one teaspoon of peppermint oil to 1 gallon of water in a garden sprayer.
- When making this larger batch, add a half teaspoon of mild dishwashing liquid (or castile soap). This helps the oil to disperse through the water.
- Shake often when spraying to keep the oil dispersed.
In Conclusion
Growing plants in your own garden means that you control what is in or sprayed on your crops. You can be sure that your harvest is chemical-free when you grow the vegetables yourself.
Using essential oils to help with insect or fungus control rather than the chemicals bought on the market assures you that the produce you and your family consume from your garden is truly a healthy option.
Essential oils will help you to feel good about your gardening efforts and the crops you produce.
Here are some other essential oils for gardening that you may find useful:
Tea Tree Oil: Fights mold and fungus
Basil: repels flies and supports vegetable plant health
Lavender: attracts pollinators, repels mosquitoes, chiggers, and ticks
Cedarwood: repels roaches, slugs, and snails
Rosemary: repels moths, flies, mosquitos, ticks
Cinnamon Bark: silverfish, cockroaches, dust mites
Lemongrass: gnats, ants, mosquitos, fleas, ticks
Lavender: mosquitos, fleas, flies, spiders
Citronella: spiders, gnats, fleas, mosquitos
Clove: wasps, ants, cockroaches, aphids