When it comes to your garden, you probably want to do what you can to make it natural. However, one of the hardest parts can be the avoidance of toxic pesticides. The good news is that there are safe and healthy natural alternatives that can work just as well.

Make Your Plants Undesirable to Pests

Many toxic pesticides are designed to kill pests, so try making a natural alternative that can deter these pests from your plants to begin with. Use one gallon of hot water, and mix it with six cloves of garlic, hot peppers, minced onion and soap. Leave this to sit for a few days, and then put it into a spray bottle. When you apply this to your plants regularly the smell will keep away any harmful pests, but you must reapply it whenever it gets washed off.

Killing Insects

There still may be instances when you need to kill the insects, and the good news is that this can be done without the use of toxic pesticides. Mix a small amount of dish soap and canola oil in water and spray it on your plants. This will smother the insect. However, when killing insects also try to remember that many bug are beneficial to your garden as a whole, so only spray when you absolutely need to.

Fungal Infections

Sometimes the problems with your plants will step from fungal infections, so take steps to prevent this from occurring in the first place, or from spreading to the rest of your plants. Mix baking soda with water and spray this on your plants – this will stop the disease from spreading.

Unfortunately this does not work on mildew, so mix water with milk and spray this on your plants twice weekly. This will help with mildew as well as other fungal infections.

As you can see, avoiding toxic pesticides doesn’t really require a lot of effort, but it’s a great way to keep you and your family healthy!