Rhubarb

Anybody heard about steeping rhubarb leaves in water and using the resulting filtered liquid to use as a bug spray?
Iv`e just started my first few leaves in a tub and was wondering if any members use the same system.

 

I use garlic as bug spray

I use Stinging Nettle/comfrey as liquid fertilizer and can be used for Fungicides/ insecticides as well

I grow all veg by the Biodynamic calendar

 

I have boiled rhubarb leaves in water and mixed the result with 'a little soft soap'.

But we aint allowed to discuss stuff like that ! elf and sayfteee.

Cheers, Tony.

 

Not Health & Safety but EU law, no untested pesticides or herbicides.

But we've since found a quote from one of our government ministers saying they are not going to prosecute anyone for using a bit of soapy water on the greenfly.

 

Have a look on this link (from which I have quoted their disclaimer) for how it used to be made before it became illegal:

http://www.organicgarden.org.uk/gardening/pests-diseases/sprays-organic-for-pest-control/

Being of high acidity, I heard that the resulting liquid made from boiling leaves discarded during the picking season was suitable for straining and pasteurising in bottles for use later in the year, and could even be beefed up by adding some garlic later in the season.

 

Crikey... thats a can of worms...thanks for heads up guys.

 

Steeping weeds in water and using that as bug spray. Do you ever see "weeds" being attacked by bugs.

 

Do i break the law when i squash an bug with my fingers (killing wildlife)
Do i break the law when i pick singing nettles (picking a wild plant)

 

I think this is just a shift from "purveyors of Snake Oil" to "We would prefer to use things that have been tested"

Sure we need to ban Snake Oil where it does no good and/or is dangerous to use.

The trouble with this litigious approach, IMHO, is:

o Large companies lobby government
o No company will pay for the testing of things that have been used successfully and safely for millennia, as there is no Intellectual Property (Patent or whatever) available to them, so once they make the test any Tom, Dick and Harry could then sell the product.

So there is no distinction between "Dangerous" (which might apply to Creosote, or Jeyes Fluid use to sterilise the soil) to "Untested" which might apply to using Rhubarb leaf spray (after all, in nature the rhubarb leaves will fall and rot - I can't see how a home-made spray is different is that) or Sulphur put on your Dahlias to stop rot. (But you can now buy Sulphur as a "mineral supplement" for your garden, or somesuch, and I've never heard it actually working in that role!)

I think what should happen is that the Government should test old tried and trusted remedies that are "likely" to be safe, and then they can be sold as such.

I would prefer to use something relatively natural, rather than a man-made chemical that is the result of very complex chemistry and which, time and time again in the past, have been found to be toxic many many years after they were licensed as being safe following the vigorous testing deemed sufficient at the time. Thalidomide? DDT? ...

if scientists find that Sulphur is toxic when used on my Dahlias as a fungicide I definitely don't want to be using it ... right now I consider it has been "banned" solely because no one has had it "tested for license", and therefore I (and many others) assume it is safe. Who knows for sure though?

Same with Rhubarb leaf spray, Garlic spray, Ammonium sulphamate as a weedkiller (very effective on Marestails, which Glyphosate barely touches) - the list goes on.

Legislation like this makes "the law an ass" and its a silly place to be where breach is more common than honour.

 

Being 'illegal' to spray your rhubarb with rhubarb leaf spray, garlic plants with garlic spray, chili plants with chili spray, etc. sounds like the biggest load of absolute nonsense that probably only the EU could have dreamed up.

 

Is it "illegal" or just not "approved"?

I'm sure you "go to jail" whichever it is, but I think there is a distinction between something that has actively been "banned", and something that has just not been "approved" in whether folk should care, or not ...

 

I wonder how many years you'd get sent down for spraying all this lot on your lobjoits: http://greensideupveg.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/organic-pesticides-and-fungicides.html