Using Lavender as a Miticide

General Fruit Growing
#1

I’ve been looking for ways of controlling Spider mites in a greenhouse. In the past couple of years,they have killed about four trees.I’ve found some recipes and expensive chemicals in my search and just came across this information on a Marijuana growing forum.I guess they battle the little critters also.

Found this on another site by Graywolf and he gave me permission to post over here.
Hopefully this will help some with the battle of the borg.

Lavender Extract: Organic Miticide

jaykush, the plant extract expert in the online cannabis community, generously shared this with the ICMag community and the feedback has been pretty incredible. Lots of people who have battled mites for a long time with many different chemicals and products have found that this completely wipes out mites within a few treatments, permanently.

Lavender flowers soaked in water for 24-48 hours. Strain the plant material out really well, then dilute 50:1 with plain water and apply to the plants with a sprayer.
• The ratio isn’t critical, but it’s something like 1 tbsp per cup of water.
• You can use fresh or dried lavender, but keep in mind that as with all plant extracts, using dried material will give you a more potent extract.
• For increased effectiveness, add a couple drops of a good natural soap (like Bronner’s) to the diluted solution prior to spraying.
• Be sure you spray all leaves. Especially pay attention to the undersides.
• This treatment also seems to kill eggs.
• Spray every 3-5 days until mites are eradicated.

Jaykush’s words directly:

simply take some lavender sprigs( sticks with flower buds on them) and strip the flower buds off. Take a 1 liter bottle, add a 1/4 cup or so of lavender flower buds. Let soak for 48 hours, then strain the plant material out well. Dilute 1:50 and spray your plants lightly on infected areas, make sure to get under the leaves. Repeat in 5 days. So far everyone i have told it to and has tried it has had success in killing mites, coot said even the eggs die which is pretty cool.
just repeat the spray every 5 days if your plants are heavily infested, ive seen very infested plants that needed 2-3 applications. But the good thing is your also feeding your plant along with killing mites. I apply lavender tea all the time for general plant health and i dont even have mites.

So everyone knows, one of the more common lavenders i have used Lavandula angustifolia. But i have used at least 6 cultivars with this method.

I AM NOT SURE IF THE ESSENTIAL OIL YOU BUY AT THE STORE WILL WORK!!! The lavender plant has over 500 active chemical compounds, i am not sure how much is transferred to the essential oils. There is a chance that one of the key mite killing chemicals did not transfer over. I prefer to use fresh because i have lots of lavender.

Testimonials:

I went pretty light on my lavender. 3g grams of dried flowers only. Very fragrant. I also let the solution sit for 4 days before using, but even at that concentration it seems to have killed all the spider mites that were hit.--------------

It was the moderator JayKush who first brought this to the board. He should be elevated to ‘Organic God’ by ICMAG - the lavender tea is without a doubt the most effective insecticide that I’ve ever used - including neem seed tree products, bicarbonates, et al. Nothing short of amazing actually.------------------

I took a cup of some desert lavender added it to a gallon of water and bubbled that for 24hours. Added 2.5ml “Dr Bronner’s Magic Soap” (18-in-one Hemp Peppermint Organic Castille Soap).

I sprayed the plants for two weeks every 5 days.

THE MITES ARE GONE.-----------------

I will be trying this during the Summer and if it doesn’t work,at least there will be a nice fragrance in the air. Brady

7 Likes
What is on these Euro Plum Leaves
#2

It may be effective but nothing will wipe out spider mites permanently. They’ll be back.

#3

Well yeah,I wasn’t expecting them to raise a white flag and do an about face,but this does give me another weapon to use.
A number of sources suggest changing the pesticides,so they don’t get too use to one thing. Brady

#4

I wish it was said to work on aphids as well, but a soft miticide for the greenhouse sounds great. Hort oil works fine for outdoors, but can hurt tender greenhouse plants. Happened to me when my peppers and tomatoes got debilitating aphids- I ended up using a pyrethroid and I almost never go synthetic to protect vegetables. It did work.

1 Like
#5

I have been trying eucalyptus oil, trying it, but not for mites, for white fly and fungus gnats. Lavender was suggested as a deterrent only, it does not kill them. Although the oil is a great deterrent and keeps spiders off of boats and houses and works very well from what some friends say. My daughter had a problem with spiders on her boat, and she said it worked very well.She has a 27 foot craft. Last year I made her take me fishing, The first 2 hours we got 11 walleye. Fishing is expected to be good this year too.
So far I’m not impressed with the eucalyptus oil, I may try this instead. maybe the same thing actually leaves would work better than the oil. I’m going to try upping the dose. It seems to kill most, but white flies are persistent and seem to never go away even with malathion. .

#6

I battle aphids on my gh peppers and other stuff also! Very tough to get them under control.

#7

On 5/29,I noticed the start of fairly heavy Spider mite infestation on a number of stone fruit trees in my greenhouse.
With these things,it’s tough to tell,until the leaves start losing their chlorophyll and the color gets mottled looking.
That day,a few ounces of Lavender oil and Dr.Bronner’s Peppermint Soap,mixed in a two gallon sprayer was applied.
The next morning,after checking the most infected plant leaves,it looked like a lot of dead bodies and only a few mites moving around on the worst ones.
A couple more sprays were done a day or two apart,with the last one yesterday,with the addition of some Lavender water extract,that had been made from soaking dried flowers for three days.A little Neem oil and about a tablespoon of dish soap was also added. Brady

2 Likes