Pesticides including herbicides are chemicals or biological agents used to kill organisms that compete with humans for food (Pests), destroy property, spread disease or are considered a nuisance. Pesticides and Herbicides may get ride of pests but they have many harmful affects that not only affects humans but also the plants. This article is about safe alternatives to herbicides and pesticides available, one alternative I found interesting was the use of ducks. Ducks are used by Chinese framers who have herded Pekin ducks by the hundreds for thousands of years because of they seek out and consume any pests they can find and they leave the mature crops alone. They are best used in your garden when there aren’t any sprouting seedlings, as they will most likely tear up the ground enough and stop the seedling from taking root, because of this ducks should only be allowed to forage when the plants are mature enough that they can survive some physical movement and won’t be hurt by some disruption in the soil. I think using ducks is an environmentally friendly and low costing gardening and farming pesticide. Another alternative I found interesting was the use of sprays such as Hot Chili Pepper Spray, Hot Chili Pepper and Wormwood Spray, Garlic Spray and Basic Soap Spray. Hot Chili Pepper Spray is used to repel/kill caterpillars and is made by blending 1 cup of hot chili peppers in a blender with 2 cups of water. Hot Chili Pepper and Wormwood Spray can help repel large pests such as opossums and rabbits and also kills white flies and aphids, it is made the same as Chili Pepper Spray but add one cup of chopped wormwood. Garlic spray is said to be very effective when it comes to repelling/killing ants, cabbage worms and caterpillars and basically how you make it is you get four raw garlic cloves in a quart of water for three days and then liquefy it using a blender. These sprays can be helpful to prevent some pests from destroying crops but they don’t really kill weeds. An interesting weed killer I found was Flame-Weeding, which is an intensive wave of heat that kills weeds, without disturbing the soil or harming the crop root system. Flame-weeding uses the heat generated from one or more propane burners to kill weeds. It can be either hand-held with the propane tank carried in a cart or in a backpack, or tractor-mounted but they all work in the same way. Intense heat sears the leaves of the weeds, causing the cell sap to expand damaging cell walls and causes leaves to wilt and prevents water from moving from the roots to the leaves. In a short period of time, the plant withers and dies even though plant is not actually burned. I found all these methods to be affective and safe and I think they should be used more often.
Alternatives to Herbicides and Pesticides
May 12th, 2010 by akca1119
