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).

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.

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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

What do you mean by Organic Gardening ?
Organic Gardening primarily means not using synthetic products such as fertilizers and pesticides. It means working much more closely with nature, and using natural means to increase the level of ingredients and essential materials such as nitrogen to the soil, and using natural means to counter pests such as insects.
An important part of going organic is that you need to change your style of dealing with problems. In normal gardening, where you do not have to follow organic principles, you can deal with pests once they occur by treating them with pesticide; you can deal with scarcity of nutrients by adding fertilizer. If you are following organic gardening principles, what you really need to do is to try and prevent problems rather than having to deal with them as they occur. Taking the initial steps to make your garden healthier results in having fewer problems to deal with and healthier plants, fewer pest and disease problems.
As a part of this, you need to make sure that your soil is healthy, has all the required nutrients, that you take care to ensure that the plants you are planting are healthy (and you have enough knowledge of the plants you are planting in terms of their requirements and their growth cycles), that you check your plants on a regular basis and have setup a frequency of checking along with a checklist of what to check. It is very important to have a knowledge of the pests in your garden, as not all insects and animals in the garden are harmful (many insects and animals actually help in pest control); further, the damange inflicted by some pests can be minimal and not really affect your plants.
The insistence of not using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is an important part of the growth of an organic garden, and not to be compromized with. It is more of a mind set change that you need to rule out the use of such chemicals. This does not mean that you cannot use pesticides, there are a whole range of pesticides and insect repellants that are based on organic ingredients and which are overall of benefit to the environment (the run-off of pesticides and fertilizers into water systems is now a major environmental and health problem).
Finally, let me round off this summary of organic gardening principles with this definition:

“an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony”

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Although groundhogs may seem cute (especially since they find mention in movies such as the popular ‘The Groundhog Day’), they are a menace to gardens; in fact they are actually a serious menace that people often underestimate until it’s too late. While you may not want to mess with them for no reason, they might be secretly eating your crops and destroying your houses without you even knowing it. They are well known for their love of green leafy vegetables. They are also famous for digging up lawns and the underside of outbuildings to set up their burrows, in effect even weakening buildings. So if you see a groundhog in your garden, you know that it’s time you got worried.
The groundhog is a type of marmot, and what marmots are, essentially, are very large squirrels. Woodchucks, having large paws, dig big holes, not to bury acorns but to build tunnels to live in, and they will dig them in any relatively flat area, including your lawn. Adults average about ten pounds. They are strictly vegetarians. They dig large, complex, interconnecting burrows and are excellent diggers.
The holes they dig can be very dangerous, with fractures from snapping of the limbs in such holes not unknown. There are many devices used to get rid of groundhogs, ranging from shooting them (if legal) to getting rid of them so that they do not come back. It is also true that what worked for somebody else may not work for you. Here’s a list of some methods that have been used to control them:
- Groundhogs will assiduously avoid properties where dogs (even little dogs) have free roam. Occasionally, if your dog is very fast, it may force encounters between your dog and the groundhog. However, it is not necessary that a dog will be able to get rid of all groundhogs.
- Simulated urine of predators, such as foxes; supposedly putting some in their burrows scares them off since the groundhogs are very scared of foxes
- Hooking a hose to an automobile exhaust pipe, extending the hose down a burrow, and running the engine until the groundhogs come out; they will then have to be trapped. Or you could go in for fumigation. Fumigation is usually done with either gas cartridges that produce carbon monoxide or with aluminum phosphide pellets. Groundhog fumigation should be done in the spring (late April, early May) before the young leave the nest, and is most effective when moist soil is used to cover the burrows, sealing the gases in and leaving no means of escape for the groundhogs.
- One of the better ways of getting rid of them is to trap them. Different types of traps can be used, but using one that can kill them needs to be checked out whether it is legal (and should not harm other pets or even small children in the vicinity). You can also use a non-lethal trap and release the captured groundhog elsewhere
- Pour human urine around the entrance to the burrow; this persuades the groundhog that this place has gone bad and they move to newer quarters
- Fence your gardens. Use 1”-3” chicken wire or wire mesh fencing, and since these creatures can dig burrows, make sure that the fence is atleast 2 feet below the surface
- Double Bubble gum: Have you seen the bubble gums manufactured under the brand name of Double Bubble? Well, they are not your typical chewing gums. A plant expert one day suggested me to use this particular bubble gum. The truth is that groundhogs love this particular brand of bubble gum very much but the irony is, as soon as they consume this gum, it instantly kills them.
- Place pinwheels around your garden. Groundhogs are scared of movement and having a few pinwheels around is likely to scare them away.
If you are trapping them, then wash your traps with plain old unscented dish soap, and use latex rubber gloves to handle the traps. This way you won’t leave the suspicious smell of human behind.