Fighting aphids with baking soda: An environmentally friendly method
Created: 08/11/2022, 11:30 am
By: Ines Alms
Baking soda is a helpful household remedy against aphids: it is not harmful to the infested plants, but it is all the more effective for the sucking pests.
Plant life could often be quite simple without aphids.
But once the animals sit on the fresh shoots, vegetables and co. quickly lose their strength.
Against such plagues, there are simple home remedies that tackle the beasts without chemicals.
This includes a homemade baking soda spray: aphids don't like water at all, baking soda even less.
Fighting aphids with baking soda: An environmentally friendly method
Baking soda works similarly to baking soda against aphids and weeds.
©Panthermedia/Imago
Home remedies can be most effective when the infestation with pests is not too great.
The
Bavarian State Office for the Environment (LfU)
therefore recommends, as a first step, carefully removing most of the visible animals with your fingers or spraying them with a jet of water.
Next, you can cut off parts of the plant that are too badly affected and use natural home remedies such as a diluted soft soap solution or products based on canola oil.
Another ecologically correct remedy is baking soda, which is used as a spray solution and works similarly to baking soda.
So that you don't completely destroy the affected plants, you should use the right baking soda: Baking soda, also known as cooking soda, not washing soda.
The latter has a devastating effect on any green.
As
Plantopedia.de
reports, however, the baking soda causes breathing difficulties in the lice, which lead to death, but leaves beneficial insects such as butterflies, ladybugs or bees unmolested.
And this is how you make a baking soda solution against aphids:
Dissolve two tablespoons of baking soda in one liter of water.
Pour the mixture into a spray bottle and spray the affected plant generously, not forgetting the undersides of the leaves.
To increase the effect, add a teaspoon of cooking oil or a quarter of a teaspoon of grated curd soap, as desired.
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Baking soda not only helps against pests, it is also an environmentally friendly way to keep weeds in their place.
It also strengthens plants against fungal diseases such as powdery mildew or gray rot.
To prevent mass reproduction of aphids in the first place, the
LfU
recommends taking precautions: by not fertilizing the plants with too much nitrogen, keeping ants away and instead promoting beneficial insects such as parasitic wasps, lacewings, earwigs or ladybirds.
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