I use this to spray for white flies, aphids and what ever bugs the squirrels & rodents leave behind. It works and I have no issues with it at all. I sray the orange tree, hibiscus and my bananas. I spray once a season, maybe twice in the summer. I use 2 tblsp of soap & 2 tblsp of oil mixed with water in a Ortho dial sprayer.

I noticed a cloud of gnats this morning when I mowed the lawn. Can I use this on the lawn to get rid of them? Will the oil cause any issues with the grass?

Thanks

K

What kind of "oil"?

Safflower or rice bran.

K

This may be one better answered by Morph the Soapmaker. He knows soap properties well. I can't figure out how that combination would work - it seems to me that soap + oil would lead to an emulsion of some type.

It is. I though the soap/oil combo would stick to the bugs that it touches and smoother them. I don't think there is much residual oil or soap left after it dries. I started doing this for white flies and it worked on them brilliantly.

These gnats in the lawn are something new for me (and very annoying). My front lawn does not have any.

I asked because on the orange tree and hibiscus, I am trying to get rid of all bugs. I don't want to harm any beneficial critters in the lawn that I am trying to make a home for.

K

It shouldn't cause a problem, I don't think. Yes, you get an emulsion, and the hydrophobic (water hating) side of the soap attaches to the oil, enabling the hydrophillic (water-loving) side to wash it away when watered. In the amounts given, there's too little soap to wash away the oil, but that's not a major issue here.

Peppermint extracts...I have no experience with them on grass. They're always used carefully when soapmaking, though, as they're quite strong, very skin-reactive, and can actually burn you if left on the skin for too long in anything approaching pure form. Diluted this far, no problems there, but I'm not sure how the grass' cuticle will respond to it.

Try a small area first and see.

Great, I'll try it in a small area

Thank you

K

...and report back because if that can get rid of gnats without wiping the worm and other nice insect population, I may be using some peppermint extract out there.

This did work for a few days but today I saw FLEAS in the yard, so tomorrow I am buying neomatodes. That should take care of both the gnats and fleas. I did see much less gnats in the yard today but it seems the reduction is temporary/short lived.

This soap combo definitely works on whiteflies and aphids. I sprayed Memorial Day and I did not spray again until 7/18. No whiteflies on the hibiscus or aphids on the orange tree the entire seven weeks.

Maybe the peppermint extract might work on the gnats. I may try that another time.

K

Fleas! Yeah, that would send me over the edge to do something myself!

MorpheusPA wrote:It shouldn't cause a problem, I don't think. Yes, you get an emulsion, and the hydrophobic (water hating) side of the soap attaches to the oil, enabling the hydrophillic (water-loving) side to wash it away when watered. In the amounts given, there's too little soap to wash away the oil, but that's not a major issue here.

Peppermint extracts...I have no experience with them on grass. They're always used carefully when soapmaking, though, as they're quite strong, very skin-reactive, and can actually burn you if left on the skin for too long in anything approaching pure form. Diluted this far, no problems there, but I'm not sure how the grass' cuticle will respond to it.

Try a small area first and see.

Sorry to go off topic...

I used to live about seven miles away from a producer of mint extracts. If the wind was blowing right, you could smell it at my house. (And when I lived in Battle Creek, MI, I could tell as soon as I walked out the door if Post was making Fruity or Cocoa Pebbles.) Anyway, the mint extract company ended up being one of my customers when I worked in transportation. Supposedly a 55-gallon drum of extract would flavor something like nine million half-gallons of ice cream. Well, as happens in the LTL industry, my driver on that route got to know the shipping guys pretty well. One day, as a prank, they put one drop of that stuff on the seat in his tractor. He said his cheek burned all day! LOL He said it felt like Ben-Gay, but about 1000 times as strong.

I once got a small amount of pure peppermint extract under my fingernail. That was fun. Not.

For soapmaking, you use no more than 1/2 ounce per pound of soap, and that's going to generate an EXTREMELY minty soap that makes your skin tingle. A very small dash of this stuff goes a very long way...for a normal scent, I'm in the drops per five pound range.