Neem Away, Bugs Away

Having read some good things about Neem oil I decided to try it. I looked for it in the Home Depot gardening department and didn’t find it. I asked a fellow I thought worked there and he quickly found it for me.

The product is called Garden Safe Fungicide Concentrate by Schultz. You would have to have very good eyesight to find and read the very small type on the label under Ingredients that says Clarified Hydrophobic Extract of Neem Oil……70%. The other 30% is listed as Inert Ingredients. If you were looking for Neem Oil, how would you ever find this?

It turns out that the gentleman who found it for me was a sales rep for a competitor of Schultz. He definitely is a gentleman. I have wondered if anyone in the H.D. garden department could have found it.

I had also heard that Dyna-Gro carries Neem Oil. So, on to their website I went for an interesting discovery. They have it but it’s listed as Pure Neem Oil Organic Leaf Polish, a plant cleaner not a pesticide.

Ah, the complexities of pesticide law. In any case, I would agree about the cleaning quality of Neem Oil, or it’s quality of brightening up the foliage without giving it an artificial look. Who knows how much cleaning it actually does. You will note that Dyna-Gro Neem Oil is 100% natural, free of water or additives.

As mentioned previously, most of the windows in the Greenscaper Lab are west facing. These locations are occasionally heat traps and conducive to outbreaks of spider mites on Chamaedorea elegans palms and mealy bugs on Aglaonema. It would be a good idea to have small fans located on the racks in these windows but haven't gotten around to doing it.

So far, the Neem Oil is working. Overall, it seems to be good stuff and environmentally sound. I sure do like the look of the plants after spraying with Neem Oil. I’ll report more at a later date.

You can read more about Neem Oil here on the Neem Foundation website.

NOTE
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