The substance in this little bottle right here just might be the secret to your
pest and disease issues in the garden. Kevin Espiritu here from Epic Gardening.
Yes, it is neem oil my friends.
I can't believe I haven't done an episode on neem oil because it's so
often recommended.
It's so popular and there's so many different recommendations for it.
So in this video, I'm going to talk about first of all, what is it?
What's the history behind this compound, this substance, this magical elixir,
if you will? And we'll go into some recipes, some things you should use it for,
some things you shouldn't use it for. And at the end of the video,
I'm going to show you kind of like my secret little treat about neem
that isn't even a liquid. Something special that you can use that is very,
very sustainable as well.
So cultivate that Like button and I will boost the strength of your neem by
2,000%. And let's get into the video.
Where did this stuff come from? It came from a tree.
It is pressed out of a tree. The tree is called Azadirachta indica.
It is grown in the Indian subcontinent,
where it grows in a wide variety of growing conditions,
although it does prefer a high temperature.
But it can kind of tolerate somewhat desolate soils from a nutrient perspective.
And it grows really prolifically. It's easy to propagate. It's easy to grow.
And as we'll see,
it is the reason why it is so easy to find neem oil.
But not really high quality neem oil, which I'll talk about in a second.
Neem itself, or products made from the neem tree,
have been used for 2,000 plus years in traditional medicine.
In food uses, which I'm not going to speak on,
as well as uses in modern times in the garden.
So the way that the oil itself is made is by collecting the seeds,
splitting them open, and then pressing them. As you can see,
this one says cold extracted, high purity neem oil. So cold pressed,
much like you would make many other types of vegetable oils.
And what you can then do is take the remains and press them again or work with
solvents to create even more oil extraction.
The problem is the neem oil quality tends to be lower in that case.
So you're going for a cold extracted, high purity neem if you can get it.
So here's the real thing, it's where you can kind of get scammed.
Not really scammed, but it's a buyer beware situation. The active compound,
the main active compound, is called Azadirachtin,
named after the actual plant itself. Chicken or the egg,
I don't know which one came first. Nevertheless,
that's the active compound that has the most impact,
specifically on pests in the garden.
But there are over 300 secondary compounds that you're not going to get unless
you get 100% cold extracted neem oil.
Any other type of product that's sort of a subset or a derivative
of that is not going to have all of those secondary compounds.
Which as we'll see in the second, are pretty darn important.
So let's say you're out here in the garden, I'm in my herb patch right now.
And I see some bugs,
some pests that I don't want on my lemongrass right here.
What do I do with neem oil to make them go away or to have the neem oil actually
have an effect on it? Well Azadirachtin, which is the main compound,
must be generally sprayed onto the actual tissue of the plant that the
bugs are eating. They will then eat the tissue,
which gets the Azadirachtin into their actual system at which point it's able
to interact with them in the way that ends up eventually killing them.
If you're wondering, hey,
can't I just spray it right on the bugs that I don't want in the garden?
You definitely can do that.
It's better that they ingest the actual neem oil which contains the
Azadirachtin. Because it tends to, as the main killing agent,
suppress their appetite. So they don't feel that they are hungry,
thus they don't eat, thus they end up actually dying.
Now here's the interesting thing. If you get cold pressed,
a hundred percent cold extracted neem oil that has all of the secondary
compounds, the sort of whole food of the neem world,
then you're going to get some other things that can happen to pests.
You'll get repelling of larva and adults.
You'll get just poor formation of eggs and larva.
It sort of can disrupt the entire biological entity that is the pest itself.
Now I know what you're probably thinking,
couldn't that just affect all the beneficials as well? And the answer is, yes,
it actually can.
Nature doesn't know that I think that's a pest and I think this one's a
beneficial, right?
So if there's a larval form of some sort of caterpillar that you might actually
want in the garden, this is why you really shouldn't be using it,
as a blanket statement, across the whole garden.
You should use it if you absolutely need to use it.
I barely ever spray neem oil, let alone spray anything else in the garden.
But this video is designed for if you have to use it, let's use it right.
And let's use it responsibly.
One caveat I'll put on that is it doesn't appear to affect things like spiders,
butterflies, bees, those types of beneficials.
Mostly the larval form of things that you would want
eventually, can be affected. And so still just use it sparingly.
But these pumpkins here, unfortunately, were not so lucky.
I was away for a few days. I saw some PM on the pumpkins. I said, you know what,
I'll deal with it when I get back? Famous last words, as you probably know,
if you've ever suffered from this terrible plant disease.
It'll just rip through a plant. And so it destroyed these pumpkins.
And here's what's interesting.
Neem oil has been shown very effectively to control powdery mildew.
And the way that you'll typically do it,
at least the study that I'll put in the description did it,
was taking a milliliter,
a single milliliter per liter of water of 70% cold
extracted neem oil.
So I don't necessarily think you have to be perfectly precise there. You know,
maybe a little dollop in a liter of water, shake it up and spray.
It seems to be extremely, extremely effective at preventing powdery mildew.
So the beauty of neem oil is that it is completely derived from a naturally
occurring plant. It is not a broad spectrum pesticide. I mean,
of course it does kill things that you may not necessarily want to kill,
but that's why you use it sparingly.
It's not going to mess with the soil life underneath dealing with the roots,
that whole soil food web that's going on. It is safe for dogs, cats, kids,
obviously not in huge quantities,
but it's not like immediately toxic at low dosages.
It doesn't mess with the waterways.
You don't have to support a company you don't like, that sort of thing.
It makes it a really effective thing to use in the garden.
Now let's talk about a couple of recipes that you can use.
I've got two recipes for you.
One is a preventative measure that you should use every two weeks or so if you
suspect you might be dealing with a budding pest or disease issue that neem oil
can treat. And so that's going to be a mixture of a teaspoon of neem oil,
a third of a teaspoon of insecticidal soap, and then a quart of warm water.
We'll put it up here with a metric conversion.
So that's the first one you can use for preventative measures every two weeks.
This next one is basically double the strength and also a larger batch quantity.
So this is something if you have an existing problem,
you're going to use it every week and you're going to do it until the problem
goes away.
Or at least gets to the point where you feel like you're completely fine with
just letting it be.
This one's six and a half ounces of cold press neem - a hundred percent if you
can get it. Four teaspoons of insecticidal soap,
I'll put a link in the description for the one that we like.
As well as four gallons of warm water.
Now let's talk about how to actually mix that mixture together,
whichever recipe you're using.
So to mix it together you're going to want to mix your insecticidal soap with
the warm water first, in a sprayer. I'll toss a sprayer in the description too.
Then mix in your neem oil slowly and try to incorporate it,
cause remember oil and water. The soap is important in this mixture.
Not only as an insecticidal deterrent but also because it helps
blend the water and the oil. But still, as you mix that neem oil in,
in your sprayer,
make sure you're shaking it as you're actually spraying it on the plant matter.
And make sure when you're actually spraying you spray both the top of the leaves
and the underside as well as any stems or crevices.
Because we all know these pests can be really sneaky and you want those early
larval forms, when they come out of their egg form,
to actually ingest the neem by ingesting the plant matter.
And it has to be coated for that to happen. If you've watched this far,
congratulations, because you now get the secret weapon.
What is the secret weapon? Well, it has nothing to do with neem oil at all.
It is the debris, the trash that is left over after you press the neem oil.
Look at this right here. This is called neem cake fertilizer.
So it is just the compressed and sort of chunked up seed debris that
comes from the neem after you press it. Now, why would you use this? Well,
it's plant matter. So there's going to be some organic nutrition within it.
In this case, the one that I have,
which is from a company called Aina Company,
I'll put it in the description, good friends of mine. They're out in Hawaii.
That's where I get mine. It's a 5-1-1, so pretty high in nitrogen.
But there's a couple interesting things that it seems like it does.
And it's why I put it in the planting hole of my plants rather than scatter it
over the cross, over the top of the soil. It just seems to be more effective.
So number one, it seems to inhibit nematode growth,
at least the negative ones. Those that can be very deadly underneath the soil,
attacking the roots, all that kind of stuff.
It seems to decrease their population. That's really, really good.
The other thing it seems to do is inhibit bacteria that do a process called
nitrification,
where they form nitrates and sort of pull nitrogen out of the soil for a little
bit.
And so being a 5-1-1 high nitrogen fertilizer and having that sort
of quality to it, it seems like what it does is it supercharges itself.
It makes its own nitrogen more available by inhibiting the bacteria that would
pull it out of the ability for the plant to actually uptake it. So,
really interesting qualities. I have absolutely loved this.
I've gone through many bags here and it's become a really good staple here at
the Epic Garden. So neem oil, neem cake fertilizer, my secret weapon.
I'll put some links in the description. Hope you enjoyed this.
Leave any questions or Comments down below.
Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.