Neem oil is a vegetable oil extracted from the Miracle Tree – that’s the Neem Tree. The botanical name of neem tree is Azadirachta indica. Azadirachtin and Nimbin found in neem oil are the two major compounds responsible for its antibacterial and antifungal actions.
This neem tree is native to the Indian subcontinent and can be easily grown at home gardening level even in large containers.
Before we discuss on which Neem oil you should purchase for best efficacy in gardening, we will list out the best uses of neem oil for your plants and gardening.
- Its Byfar the best Organic Pesticide available worldwide. It has an excellent safety profile and the best efficacy to treat a large number of pest attacks on your plants. It is infact a broad spectrum pesticide effective on pests like Aphids, Mealybugs, Whiteflies, Caterpillars,leaf miners, fungus gnats, Thrips and mites, Greenflies, Grasshoppers and other Scale insects. It kills pests in all their lifecyle stages like the adult stage or the larval stage.
- It has the Anti bacterial, anti viral and anti fungal properties not only for use on plants but also prescribed for humans and pets for various skin and hair problems.
- Its also effective on Slugs and snails which eat away a lot of your garden overnight. I have an important episode to identify some hidden pests and insects in garden by examining the leaf signature they leave after feeding on the leaves. You can watch that episode from a link in the video description or from an end screen.
- It highly Effective in the Treatment of Black spot Rose disease, Rose die back disease and Powdery mildew. We have detailed episodes on each of these plant diseases and problems. You can watch those episodes from the description links.
- Neem cake is an excellent organic fertilizer for your plants. Neem cake is the by-product left over after the process of extraction of neem oil from neem seeds or neem fruits. Its not only a source of NPK and micro nutrients for plant growth, but when mixed with soil acts as a soil conditioner and also antibacterial and antifungal. You can avoid fungus gnats if you incorporate about 10 percent neem cake powder in your potting mix.
- last but not the least is, unlike the chemical pesticides, It does not affect the beneficial pollinators like butterflies and honey bees which are so important for a fruitful gardening.
Now, we will discuss the most important aspect of this video, based on which the quality, composition and efficacy of neem oil depends – that’s the method of extraction of neem oil from seeds.
There are three methods:
- Heat Pressing method.
- Solvent extraction method and
- Cold Press method.
Heat pressing method – as the name implies, its using heat for crushing or pressing the seeds to extract oil.
Solvent extraction means using a solvent like alcohol is used to extract neem oil. This solvent extracted neem oil usually has a low price, because it is turbid and contains a significant amount of water and metals with low content of the important compounds namely azhadiractin and nimbin.
Heat extracted neem oil also has moderate loss of the useful compounds and less effective.
Whereas the Cold pressed Neem oil extracted without applying any heat, is the best and effective source for neem oil. So, when you are purchasing from a local garden store or online, make sure you check the method of extraction mentioned on the bottle or product description. You can purchase cold pressed neem oil here.
How to use Neem oil properly for the best effects?
Before I start with the neem oil recipes for plants, the safety profile of neem oil. It has few effects when concentrated form is ingested like stomach irritation causing gastritis and vomiting. Then Eye irritation and contact dermatitis can develop on contact specially in children. Otherwise it has an excellent safety profile and its completely biodegradable.
Now the recipe for Neem Oil you can make at Home.
Before this, few important points you must remember:
- Because it’s an oil, it doesn’t mix well with water and must be mixed with some kind of surfactant like liquid soap or even shampoo for proper mixing and the coating effect on the plant leaves.
- Make sure you do not spray neem oil during the sunlight – best time to spray is in evenings after the sun fades.
To Make the best broad spectrum PESTICIDE FOLIAR SPRAY FORMULATION for 1 litre:
Take 1 litre Warm Water and add 10 drops of liquid soap like your handwash or
even some shampoo. Then you add 5 ml to
10 ml of Neem oil into this. 5 ml if you want to spray as a maintenance
pesticide spray for your garden where you do not have much pests.
10 ml if you have lot of pests on your plants.
Mixing this thoroughly before use is very important.
Perform a PATCH TEST to know how strong it is. This means you Just spray this
on one or two leaves and then wait for a couple of hours to see if the leaf is
wilting or burning due to too much concentration of neem oil. If you pass the
patch test, you can spray it on your whole garden safely. Patch test may be
important for newbie gardeners or if you have purchased a new brand of neem oil
from some company for the first time.
Also make sure you spray the underside of the leaves as well.
- How frequently should I use neem oil? Depending on the severity of pests, use it twice a week for pest eradication phase and then weekly once for 1 or two months and finally if everything is clean use it once every 15 days as a preventive measure.
Happy Gardening!
Before I list out the remedies that really work, we will try to know the reasons or causes of this Blossom end rot disease in tomatoes.
The main
reason for this problem is lack of calcium:
Either calcium deficient soil or poor absorption of calcium from the
soil or Soil PH issues not allowing the absorption of nutrients.
So How do you treat this BER? If you think the soil is deficient in calcium, you might just think of supplementing this calcium by crushed or powdered eggshells or even calcium tablets or similar stuff. This type of application should be used for prevention of the disease and not for the treatment as this cannot happen instantly, because the plant simply cannot suck calcium from the soil as soon as you add it.
So, How to Stop this or Prevent this. Remember Always Prevention is better than cure. I conducted one simple experiment. I used my magic foliar spray solution on all my tomato plants once every 15 days and I kept one tomato plant as a control and did not spray anything on this plant. And this plant as you can see developed blossom end rot in tomatoes. The plants who got their calcium and other nutrients through foliar spray never developed this problem. I will let you know the recipe for this magic foliar spray solution now.
Also other points to remember to prevent this problem are:
Sowing seeds on right time. Just at the end of Spring is the perfect time to sow tomato seeds. Thats in feb or march first week.
Well now you can checkout the recipe for the foliar spray liquid to treat tomato blossom end rot problem. I will quickly list out the ingredients one by one and quickly explain the benefit of each of these components.
1. Water: Nothing to explain about this universal solvent. We will formulate this recipe for 1 liter of water.
2. Milk: You can use skimmed milk or if available Raw milk is best. You can even use spoilt milk, butter milk or stuff like that. Use it with lower than 20 percent dilution in water that is 1:5 dilution. So you can add about 100 ml or 200 ml milk to our universal solvent. Milk is not only a source of calcium, but also an antifungal for treatment of powdery mildew and blossom end rot disease on tomato and other vegetable plants. It also kills many plant viruses like tobacco mosaic virus. In place if milk you can add 1 liter of a special water. Yes that’s special calcium rich water for plants. It s nothing but the left over water after you hard boil few eggs. The egg shells release a lot of calcium into this water during boiling.
3. Epsom Salt that’s magnesium sulfate which is a greatest source of magnesium and sulfur. This is easily available at a gardening store or at your local pharmacist and even online. So the dosage is max 5 gms or little lesser than a teaspoon per 1 liter of water.
4. Then the Most important ingredient for adding the major NPK elements into the foliar spray is COMPOST TEA. So, how do you make compost tea? Its really simple. Just Add a handful of decomposed manure or compost like cowdung powder or vermicompost per liter of water. You can make your own quantity of 2 liters or 5 liters depending on your garden size. Allow this to brew for atleast 1 week. Make sure you stir this atleast once every 24 hours to oxygenate this mix till 1 week. Then strain out the liquid using a cloth and use this liquid. I shall make a detailed video some other time on how to use some simple gadgets like an aquarium air pump to quickly make your compost tea.
Well, For now, Once the compost tea is ready, you should dilute this like 1:5 in water and then add about 1 liter to the above solution. Normally if you are using only the compost tea as a foliar spray, you need to use 1:10 dilution. But here we are making a 2.1 liter solution in total. I Hope you got my point!
That’s it, mix it thoroughly and load the spray bottle or use your electric sprayer or whatever and foliar feed your plants. Spray very early in the morning or late in the evening because leaf stomatas are well opened at this period so that absorption happens at its best.
Well, before I show you the actual recipe or the Formula for the making of our so called magic solution, you must know some Basic concepts. Please do not skip these 5 points am gonna discuss now. Will try to make it as short and as simple as possible, specially for beginners.
1. What do you mean by foliar Spray? Foliage means leaves! So the term foliar spray says it all, that is Spraying a liquid fertilizer on your plants foliage which aids in absorption of certain essential elements like calcium, magnesium through their stomata. Stomata are pores found in the epidermis of leaves which help in nutrient absorption and also gas exchange.
2. Calcium and Its importance: Calcium is the most important component of a plants cell wall. Hence for cell division and growth its indispensable, especially in rapid growers like tomatoes. So we will keep this point in mind and add calcium into our mix.
3. Magnesium and Its importance: Did you know Magnesium is the central atom in between four nitrogen atoms in the chlorophyll molecule. For beginners, Chlorophyll is the pigment present in leaves which is essential for photosynthesis – that’s plant food production. So we will keep this point in mind and add magnesium into our mix using our famous organic Epsom salt.
4. Soil PH concept: We have discussed in detail about the importance of soil ph in nutrient absorption in my video titled Ideal Soil PH for plants. You can check that HERE. Well! when it comes to foliar spray of fertilizer solution, its completely independent of the soil PH, because nutrients are absorbed through leaves.
- And last concept: Many Experts recommend applying egg shells andcalcium tablets to soil and some evenmake a smoothie juice or paste using all kitchen waste like banana peels, fruit peels and what not. This in perhaps unscientific according to me to directly apply to your plants. I don’t know! If you have any scientific explanation to this, please do write in the comment box. What I feel is why not utilize this idea of making this smoothie and keeping a dedicated heavy duty blender or mixer for this purpose for faster composting. Yes! if you are adding this paste to your compost bin and feeding your earth worms, this can accelerate composting process.
So you can utilize this concept of foliar feeding if your plants are not performing well despite all your efforts, care, fertilizing, watering promptly and what not! Many viewers keep asking the same question. So why not make it a habit of alternating your feeds – that’s fertilizing your plants once in 15 days with foliar spray to feed your plants. Because this idea is independent of soil PH value.
Now The Formula or the recipe of this Magic Fertilizer liquid.
I will quickly list out the ingredients one by one and quickly explain the benefit of each of these components.
1. Water: Nothing to explain about this universal solvent. We will formulate this recipe for 1 liter of water.
2. Milk: You can use skimmed milk or if available Raw milk is best. You can even use spoilt milk, butter milk or stuff like that. Use it with lower than 20 percent dilution in water that is 1:5 dilution. So you can add about 100 ml or 200 ml milk to our universal solvent. Milk is not only a source of calcium, but also an antifungal for treatment of powdery mildew and blossom end rot disease on tomato and other vegetable plants. It also kills many plant viruses like tobacco mosaic virus. In place if milk you can add 1 liter of a special water. Yes that’s special calcium rich water for plants. It s nothing but the left over water after you hard boil few eggs. The egg shells release a lot of calcium into this water during boiling.
3. Epsom Salt that’s magnesium sulfate which is a greatest source of magnesium and sulfur. This is easily available at a gardening store or at your local pharmacist and even online. So the dosage is max 5 gms or little lesser than a teaspoon per 1 liter of water.
4. Then the Most important ingredient for adding the major NPK elements into the foliar spray is COMPOST TEA. So, how do you make compost tea? Its really simple. Just Add a handful of decomposed manure or compost like cowdung powder or vermicompost per liter of water. You can make your own quantity of 2 liters or 5 liters depending on your garden size. Allow this to brew for atleast 1 week. Make sure you stir this atleast once every 24 hours to oxygenate this mix till 1 week. Then strain out the liquid using a cloth and use this liquid. I shall make a detailed video some other time on how to use some simple gadgets like an aquarium air pump to quickly make your compost tea.
Well, For now, Once the compost tea is ready, you should dilute this like 1:5 in water and then add about 1 liter to the above solution. Normally if you are using only the compost tea as a foliar spray, you need to use 1:10 dilution. But here we are making a 2.1 liter solution in total. I Hope you got my point!
That’s it, mix it thoroughly and load the spray bottle or use your electric sprayer or whatever and foliar feed your plants. Spray very early in the morning or late in the evening because leaf stomatas are well opened at this period so that absorption happens at its best.