Whether you’re rich or poor, its generally agreed that saving money is a good thing. If you give it enough thought and aren’t afraid of a little hard work, you can cut some corners on your gardening budget while helping to do your part to save the environment, too. In most cases it’s not as much work as you may think, either.

Insecticidal Soap

Reusing a spray bottle in the garden as opposed to continually buying and throwing away spray bottles from the store is obviously much better for the environment. A glass or stainless steel spray bottle would be best but are unfortunately cost prohibitive and rather bulky for most of us to want to lug around the garden. I recommend buying a few pesticide sprayers available at most Home & Garden stores.

To make insecticidal soap, I recommend Dr. Bronner’s Liquid Peppermint Castile Soap. Peppermint makes a great addition to insecticidal soap because the strong smell repels insects. Use 1 to 2 teaspoons of Castile Soap per gallon of water. Be careful not to use more then 2 teaspoons per gallon or you may harm your plants when you spray them.

To improve your mixture so it will work on a wider variety of pests you may also wish to add any strong-smelling spices or roots. Onions, garlic, horseradish, ginger, cayenne pepper and any other hot peppers are all known to work well.

Mosquito Repellent

If you live in a region where there are a lot of mosquitoes, its probably best you not be outside during the dawn and sunset hours when mosquitoes are most active without wearing a mosquito repellent of some kind. Growing your own organic lemongrass can provide you with plenty of lemongrass to make an extract from, which can then be sprayed directly onto your skin. To get some lemongrass buy some from an Asian supermarket and make sure to get some that have some of the root portion of the stalk at the bottom. Then place the lemongrass stalk in a glass with an inch or so of water and once you see the roots beginning to grow you can plant it in your garden.

Lemongrass is a very drought tolerant plant, it actually stores reserves of water at the base of the plant. It prefers a sandy soil so if you can add liberal amounts of sand to your soil mixture. These generally low-maintenance plants grow quickly and yield plenty of lemongrass for you to make a batch of extract every so often.

If you have access to a tincture press this probably the best way to extract the liquid from the lemongrass. Otherwise you can simply cut the lemongrass into small bits and place it in water for a few hours. You should measure the lemongrass cuttings and use 2 cups of water for every cup of lemongrass.

Stay Tuned, More To Follow

I will be adding to this list more in the future, but in the meantime if you have any other ideas you want to mention please feel free to comment.