AN urban gardener has shared his recipe for an easy and affordable natural pesticide.
The four-part concoction requires items you may already have in your home.
Pablo Quintero Restrepo (@UrbanBackyardGardening), a gardening YouTuber, shared his tips and tricks in an interview with The U.S. Sun.
His straightforward but effective homemade and natural pesticides save him time and money.
While there are lots of pesticide products available on the market, Restrepo explained that his favorite solution comprises stuff most people have at home.
"One of the most popular recipes is just water, soap, vegetable oil, and baking soda," he said.
"You can also create a few more by extracting the specific repellent properties of a food by sort of making a tea and then diluting it with water."
To deter mice and rodents, he explained that he uses a gentle contraption that prevents them from getting at his crops but doesn't harm the animals.
"I have a trap that closes the moment the specimen tries to catch the bait," he said.
"It will not kill the specimen, so after it is caught, I like to take it on a trip somewhere there is lots of nature and release it."
To keep weeds at bay, the gardener revealed that sugar cane mulch makes overgrowth easy to deal with.
"I like to use sugar cane mulch to keep them suppressed as much as I can," he said.
"[The weeds] will come out anyway, but for some reason, it feels easier to pull them out if they have grown out of this sugar cane mulch.
"I also like to use cardboard to cover a specific part of the garden and let it sit on the soil until I am ready to plant. Depending on how long the cardboard has been sitting there, weeds will be weak or non-existent."
In addition to homemade pest repellent, Restrepo also relies on DIY gardening projects to cut down on costs, such as homemade compost with food scraps and hand-constructed frames.
"One of my first projects was to build a cheap enclosure for some specific vegetables that are prone to pests, such as kale, rocket, spinach, and lettuce," he said.
Are there common gardening mistakes you'd warn people about?
Restrepo explained that while making mistakes is "part of every gardener's journey," a few can be easily avoided.
"One of the most common mistakes for beginners is planting in the wrong season," he said.
"If you live in a zone of the world where there are seasons, then you will have to look at what vegetables can be planted at the specific month that you are at; if there are no seasons, then you will have to check what can be grown locally."
"Another common mistake is not preparing the soil with adequate nutrients," he added.
"People will plant in any soil hoping that everything grows well, and unfortunately, a few months later, the results will be very poor, leaving them disheartened and not wanting to keep on growing vegetables.
"They have to realize that soil is a living system, and the system requires nutrients so it can provide [them] to the plants. Feed the soil, and the soil will feed your plants."
Though construction proved difficult for the novice gardener at the time, he felt that his efforts were worth the time and energy.
"The enclosure has had a few challenges, but it has lasted a few years now, and it has done a good job protecting these crops from pests," he said.
Restrepo built the rectangular enclosure frame out of PVC tubes connected with PVC joiners.
"It’s finished with a net specifically designed for the garden," he said.
He explained that frames are extremely helpful, especially with crops that grow in an upward direction, such as tomatoes.
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"Another of my favorite projects is a three-sided joined 'grow wall' metal frame, easy to join with galvanized wire," he said.
"I use it to train tomatoes and snow peas; the entire structure is pretty stable and long-lasting as it is made of metal."
