Organic insecticides are a prime need for those who are into organic farming. In organic farming, you depend on your farming methods to ensure that your plants do not have pests, but even when there are pests, you can learn to ignore some of them as long as they are not enough to cause damage to your plants. However, when you reach a stage whereby you need to get rid of your pests, you need to use organic insecticides to get rid of these pests.
Organic insecticides are thought to be environmentally sound, causing no harm to the earth, humans, or animals. They often consist of such things as fatty acids and plant oils. Natural pesticides act upon pests either through contact, or through absorption by the pests of these chemicals. The advantage of using organic pesticides is more of a reverse strategy, whereby you consider that artificial pesticides can use harmful chemicals (DDT anyone?), with a lot of residue left behind that affects other insects and pollutes through run-offs into rivers and streams.
However, you should keep in mind that using pesticides is part of an overall pest avoidance strategy that employs the usage of traps, and naturally occurring insects / other animals which counter the pests. This is also because artificial insecticides are more powerful than organic ones, and you need to compensate with a more comprehensive pest avoidance strategy. You need to ensure that you are following all these tactics before you start considering the use of pesticides (even organic pesticides). Further, just because an insecticide is organic does not mean that it is totally harmless; you should make sure that you are using the insecticide in the quantities and in the mechanism as directed. Also, be careful about the exact insecticide you are using.
Read this article for how to buy organic insecticides (link).

Neem is a tree found primarily in India. Neem has been used for a long time for a variety of purposes in India, such as a natural toothbrush, its dried leaves are used when packing clothes so as to protect against insects. In addition, the oils from Neem are used as part of making soap for bathing and for cleaning. Going further on this line, Neem is very helpful against insects and pests, and is an integral part of organic principles. For organic farming, it is mandatory that any treatment of insects and pests be done without using chemical insecticides; it does not prevent the use of insecticides, only that they should be naturally occurring materials.
Neem makes for an excellent insecticide. It acts in a different way from chemical insecticides; you apply a chemical insecticide and the insects / pests drop dead or run away. However, Neem acts in a different way. You cannot apply Neem based insecticide, and expect to see the insects dying off in droves. Neem acts to subvert the natural behavior of insects, affecting them internally. So, in some time, you will start to see the insects unable to eat, unable to create eggs or young larvae, in fact, insects seem to forget how to do their normal behavior, and eventually leads to the dying off of the population. This takes time to happen, so the gardener needs to be patient.
Further, the effect of Neem seems to affect only those insects who are categorized as chewing or sucking, so you can stop worrying that all the pollen spreading bees will die off after you apply neem. You of course need to be a bit careful, not using the Neem insecticide during the daytime, instead using it either in the morning or the evening. This way, you do not coat the insects with the liquid, instead the bugs deal with the dried insecticide.
More technical: You need to be careful of what you buy for this purpose. Many stores do not have Neem labelled as an insecticide because of regulations. When you buy one, be sure that it has the following on the label – Azadirachtin. You should take care to buy a Neem product that has ‘Azadirachtin’ with a high content, and not some substitute that contains hydrophobic extract (will not be powerful enough, but you would not know that and would be disappointed with the results). Also, if you have a pond in your garden, be sure that you do not spray the neem into the pond.
Further, Neem works from inside the plant as well, since the Neem is absorbed by the plant and goes inside the tissues. As and when the insects start consuming the plant, they feel the effect of the Neem insecticide. For some insects, they consume the insecticide, and others get repelled by the smell.
Neem needs to be mixed with water, with around 1 ounce of the insecticide with around a gallon of water. You also need to apply the insecticide on a regular basis, maybe around once every 10-14 days. Further, since useful insects such as bees and lady bugs don’t eat the plant, they don’t feel any effects of the insecticide. Also, you need to spray the insecticide solution on the potting soil as well.

Ad: Click Here for the Organic Food Gardening Beginners Manual.!

Garden Safe All Natural Fungicide3 – 24 oz Spray

If you are into organic farming (or if you are following organic principles for your kitchen garden), then it is very important for you to know all about organic insecticides. One of the problems quote in traditional ways of farming is the use of chemical / synthetic pesticides that leave residues that make their way into animals and humans, and also end up polluting the soil and water. So, what is an organic insecticide ? It is a substance made from natural ingredients that is used for repelling insects and pests; you still need to repel pests and insects even if you go organic.
Organic insecticides are also specialized, in the sense that certain insecticides work on different insects / pests, and you need to do the necessary research to ensure that you have identified the pest you need to get rid of, and what insecticide you need to use. Before making that decision though, ensure that you have actually reviewed that you do have an insecticide or pest problem. Just because an insect is eating away the leaves from your plant does not mean that the plant or the produce is getting harmed (plants can take a loss of upto 25-33% of their leaf cover before their growth is harmed).
Further, ensure that you have also checked out that there are no natural predators that you can use; for example, certain bugs eat insects or pests as a part of nature, and using that solution might work out better. However once you have decided that you have a pest problem that cannot be solved by any other means, then you need to use an organic insecticide.

Ad: Click Here to learn how to double your tomato harvest!

The Organic Gardener’s Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control: A Complete Problem-Solving Guide to Keeping Your Garden and Yard Healthy Without Chemicals

Soil preparation is critical if you are going in for organic farming. You do not have the liberty of adding a load of chemical fertilizers later if you find some deficiencies in the soil; and the motto for organic farming remains, “do adequate preparation rather than react later”.
Making sure that the soil is healthy is an important first step in the preparation for organic farming. If the soil used for organic farming was earlier used for commercial farming, then you need to spend time to ensure that the presense of chemical fertilizers and pesticides have been removed from the soil (how to do this is a separate post), the duration for which you need to have kept such soil clean before using it for organic farming depends on the organic gardening certification in your country or state, and you should check those regulations.
The steps that you should take in order to get your soil ready are:
- Make sure that there are no weeds, stones, or pieces of other debris in the soil, and that it is ready for next steps
- Do a soil analysis. You can get a proper soil analysis done, or you can look at the rough ways of estimating the quality and breakup of your soil. Soil should have 3 main components (sand – 40%, silt 40%, and clay 20%). The soil should be one that you can compress with your hand, and it forms a solid mass that breaks when you poke it. If it either is unable to form a solid mass, or does not crumble when you apply effort, then the soil either has too much sand, or too much clay. An imbalance can result in the soil not being optimum, with imapct on water logging, or the ability of soil to let plants grow in it.
- You can also take a sample of your soil, put it in a glass beaker or jug of water, and then shake, and then let the soil settle down. The settling inside the glass leaves you with 3 different layers, of sand, silt and clay (with clay on top). The levels of each will slowly start giving you an idea of what is missing, and then you can add more of the missing element to get a better mixture. of course, if you are not able to get a correct mixture, go to the store and ask them for the amount of soil you require (make sure that you specify that you are going to grow organically)
- Look to see how you can encourage the growth of healthy stuff such as microbes, earthworms, etc. They do a lot to make your soil better.
- Read up about the various fertilizers you can add to your soil to make up for deficiencies. This would mean that you need to find out what your soil is missing, and requires some amount of knowledge (or if you don’t have knowledge, either learn, or get somebody who can advise). Be sure that adding some good compost is typically helpful for the soil.
- Learn about crop rotation, so that you plan ahead for the crops you are going to put in the soil, and learn about which plants add which element, and remove which nutrient from the soil. Doing this is essential if you want to make sure that you soil is good in terms of nutrients, not only now, but for the future.
- Soil is improved when you add organic matter to the soil. This means that you should items such as compost, and even some more strange items such as hair (for nitrogen), grass clippings, purchased organic fertilizer, peat moss
- If you can, enable poultry to have free access to your soil. Hens do a fair amount of the manual hard work required, such as removing weeds, adding manure, and undertaking tilling of the soil.

Ad: Manual For Creating & Managing Your Own Organic Food Garden, Click here