Hope is Not a Plan
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
My normal preventative treatment for tomato and chili plants (since they are both nightshade) is not organic. Im really not liking the use of that term. It has been taken over by the snake oil salesmen of the world to take money from your pocket. </end rant>
I have decided to add a new ingredient to my normal twice a month preventative spray. Here's the old recipe:
1 gallon water
1 table spoon baking soda
1 500mg aspirin
total cost; $0.23 if that.
to that I have added
2 table spoon DE (diatomaceous earth) (add $0.03)
These folks seems to be pretty well up on what the baking soda does:
and these folks seem credible (from University of Arizona) on aspirin
and these folks are just hog crazy about DE
I wanted to test to see if the DE would clog my sprayer (it did not) and also to see if I could detect it on the plant surface after it had dried.
I did this in a side by side test. One plant was treated with the original recipe and one with extra crispy. (and now the reason there is no photo in this post)
Since the baking soda dries on the leaf with a white residue and the DE dries with a white residue, the only way I could think of was to taste it. I was successful in tasting the DE from a moistening finger swab of the 2 leafs. (with a palette cleansing cracker between). So just trust me.
After 1 week there have been no detrimental effects on either plant.
So for about $0.26 cents I have the most effective preventative spray to guard against:
early blight, late blight, aphids, horned tomato worm, chili wilt, etc etc etc.
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