In Today’s episode, we will look into some amazing benefits of Asafoetida in your
garden as a fertilizer and a pesticide to treat various plant diseases and pests. Coming up!
First and foremost, I always repeat these lines: Please avoid the use of chemical
pesticides and fertilizers which have a lot of hazardous effects on humans and animals.
That’s the main reason, why we promote the use of natural agents or organic pesticides and
fertilizers in this gardening channel. What is Asafoetida?
Asafoetida, also known as heeng, is a common flavoring agent found in most kitchens. It’s
actually dried latex or gum exuded from the rhizome or tap root of Ferula Asafoetida plants.
What is the Scientific Basis of its use in gardening and Farming?
First of all, let’s look into its composition. Typical asafoetida
contains about 40–64% resin, 25% endogenous gum, 10–17% volatile oil, and 1.5–10% ash. The resin
portion and the volatile oil portion contains a lot of strong compounds that are responsible
for its pungent odor and its beneficial properties. Apart from it’s medicinal properties,
Asafoetida has some amazing uses in gardening and farming as a pesticide to control many pests
and insects including termites, also to repel rodents and animals from your garden or farm,
and also to treat some plant diseases like leaf curl virus or leaf curl disease which otherwise
has absolutely no treatment. We will look into how to use Asafoetida for each of these problems.
1. How to use Asafoetida to treat Leaf Curl Disease?
Take one liter of sour butter milk. You can also take 500 ml, if you have fewer plants.
Add one teaspoon or about 5 gms of Asafoetida powder to it and mix well.
Let it stay for 1 or 2 hours. Sieve this solution using a fine cloth to avoid spray bottle clogging.
Spray this thoroughly over the affected plant including the underside of the
leaves. Repeat this every 3 days for 3 – 4 times. Leaf curl disease which is common in
pepper and tomato plants will be completely cured by this treatment most of the times.
2. How to use Asafoetida to Repel Insects and Termites?
Take 50 gms of Asafoetida – raw cake form is better. Put this in a piece of cotton cloth and
make a small sac like this. Hang this over the tree or plant where you want to repel unwanted
insects including termites. The disagreeable odour repels termites and other insects.
3. How to use Asafoetida to Repel Unwanted Animals and Rodents?
Sometimes these rodents and other animals including our pets like cats and dogs create
havoc in our gardens. Most of these animals hate the strong pungent smell of asafoetida. To make
it effective you need to use a lot of Asafoetida wrapped up in cotton cloth to repel these animals.
Perhaps about 100 gms of Asafoetida may help protect and area of about 1 to 2 square meters.
It may not be so much cost effective, but it depends on the intensity of your problem.
4. How to Use Asafoetida as an Organic Fertilizer and Why?
Using Asafoetida as a liquid fertilizer is said to boost plant immune system and protect it from
various diseases in the long run. Add 2 grams of raw Asafoetida or pure powder form to 1 litre of
water. Mix it well by stirring continuously. Then water your plants with this solution once in a
while, preferably in early growth stages of the plant. You can also mix more of it per liter of
water and then dilute the solution accordingly and water your plants once in a while. You can also
foliar spray this solution over your plants. 5. How to use Asafoetida as an Organic Pesticide?
Asafoetida alone may not be effective to control common pests in our gardens like Aphids,
mealybugs, whiteflies, thrips, mites and so on. But mixing this with other
ingredients can make it a powerful natural pesticide to control these pests.
Take 1 litre of water and add 5 gms of Asafoetida powder or cake form. Add Neem oil of about 5 ml.
Mix it well and spray it on the affected plants once weekly. If neem oil is not available,
you can make use of other stuff to make it more powerful. We have done a lot of
videos on these alternate pesticides. You can check the playlist from this end screen
link circled right here. You can check that list of videos from a link in description.
Please Like, Share and Comment below with your feedback and queries. Happy Gardening!