Morning everyone, if you’re interested in gardening and growing beautiful plants and vegetables like I am and don’t like to use a lot of pesticides in your garden, I’d just like to show you a really quick and easy, natural caterpillar repellant that we’ve used over the last year or so in our gardens and found it to be really effective.
We had a spate last summer where a lot of our plants got quite dessimated by caterpillars and this seemed to work really really well.
So all you need is 500ml of water, a sprayable bottle, this one I’ve got here at the moment is only 500ml itself, so I’ve cut the water down slightly so that we’ve got enough room left in the top to mix in the other ingredients, to have enough room to combine them correctly. You’ll also need a funnel, a set of measuring spoons with tablespoon and teaspoon, they’re the two main ones you’ll require. Any old kind of dishwashing liquid that you may have under your sink, it doesn’t matter what brand it is. Some garlic powder, again, it doesn’t matter what brand it is, this is just what I happened to have in my cupboard I chose to get the larger one because we make this up into large containers to spray all over our garden. You can just get the small Masterfoods one, or the home brand ones, whichever you choose.
So we’ve got two flat tablespoons of garlic powder, our water, and our dishwashing liquid. It’s just a matter of pouring your water straight into your spray bottle, I always pour the water straight into the container, not through the funnel because we don’t want the funnel to get wet or the garlic powder will stick to the funnel. Place your funnel in the bottle and pour your garlic powder straight into the funnel. Just give the funnel a little bit of a shake to release the garlic powder, depending on the brand of garlic powder you have, some are a bit thicker than others and you may find they get a bit stuck. I tend to find if you use a chopstick or a long skewer in the funnel to push the garlic powder through.
Ok, so now the garlic powder is in the water, it’s time for the dishwashing liquid. Now you only need a teaspoon full of the dishwashing liquid, I find it easier just to try and gauge a teaspoon rather than measuring it, as it gets stuck to the teaspoon and is hard to get off. Pop your lid on the spray container, and give it a really good shake to mix up the garlic powder and dishwashing liquid. This may take a couple of minutes , but once it’s all mixed in you’re ready to go. You can keep this in your shed for quite a long time, if it settles in between uses, just give it another shake and you’re ready to go.
Now it’s time to show you how to apply it to your plants. Ok, so just wander down to your garden, if you find any plants that have already got holes in them or caterpillars as you can see here, just use your spray and give it a good generous spray over the area. If you do happen to see live caterpillars you can also spray this directly on to the back of the caterpillar. Caterpillars don’t like the taste and the smell of garlic so this will deter them to go to another place, other than eating your lovely plants!
