Organic and semi-organic multi-use sprays will be discussed in this segment. We at PJ's Plants and Nutrition, LLC try to stay with sustainability in all horticultural/agricultural practices, so nothing that will harm aquatic life or put toxicity into the soil will be used for this post! There are SOOOO many good multi-use sprays out there that I will be posting two different segments on the subject! This will be the first content of the 2-part blog. I also want to state that when I say "multi-use" I'm referring to the product(s) being a pesticide/fungicide or insecticide/fungicide/miticide etc., covering a broad spectrum of problems that a garden, greenhouse, and/or an indoor facility will face!
Monterey B.T. or any B.T. for that matter!
I figured I would start off with one of the worst menaces for outdoor gardens and that's caterpillars! These little guys dominate the outdoor space and if you're unlucky to have these chewing up your plants, better act fast! They will eat your whole crop before you know it! From tomato plants to medicinal marijuana crops, these guys are no joke! They will put you out of business if you're a commercial cultivator/farmer if you let them.
Luckily, there is an organic option to get rid of them and the most popular by far is using bacillus thuringiensis, better known as B.T...
B.T. has many suppliers and brands that we recognize, the major ones being Monterey. They all are relatively the same as far as active ingredients which is Kurstaki, the subspecies of bacillus thuringiensis. Monterey seems to be the most popular brand and it's no surprise! They have a huge selection of pest control products, fungicides, micronutrients, and more!
Monterey B.T. is OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute) listed which is an organic input stamp and for good reason. It consists of the active bacillus thuringiensis subspecies kurstaki along with SA-12 solids, and spores. Fun fact on the spores, there are 6 million viable spores per milligram! Monterey B.T. and other brands that carry B.T. products like Safer or Fertilome are fairly priced for a biological insecticide! The price range is $13-$20 dollars per pint and $25-$35 for a quart size. The mix rate is 20 ml or 4 teaspoons per Gal of water, so 1 pint can make over 20 gallons of B.T. spray!
B.T. is well known for taking care of caterpillars, they cover a wide variety of pests! Which includes:
Bagworm
Spring Cankerworm
Fall Cankerworm
Tent Caterpillar
Fall Webworm
Gypsy Moth
Elm Spanworm
This great product will handle any worm-like situation you may have! Click the link below to purchase from our website!
Dustable Wettable Sulfur - The Mega Killer!
This stuff is an all-for-one multi-use spray that is 90% sulfur! It's also very versatile as well, as it can be used on shrubs, flowers, roses, fruits, and vegetables! This stuff is very popular in the Oklahoma medicinal market as well as a very good, cost-effective, vegetative spray! However, do not use this in any bloom stage if you are growing vegetables, flowers, or medicinal crops as it will affect the taste and smell!
You can "dust" your crops with this stuff on all the plant surfacing and you must do it very thoroughly! Especially when you're dealing with hard-to-see critters like spiders or rust mites! If you haven't had either one of those, they are a nightmare to deal with, but like anything else, if it's caught early enough, this product will knock them out!
It's very cost-effective, if you buy in-store at a local garden center or hydroponic store, you seem to get the better deal compared to online, but the price is for convenience! Hi-Yield dusting wettable sulfur normally goes for 7-10 dollars per 4lb bag, which is the most cost-effective insecticide/miticide/fungicide on the market! The mix rate isn't bad either. 4 tablespoons (2 oz) per gallon of spray! You can get 16 gallons of spray with this mix rate which is pretty good! They also make bigger bags, I know we carry both the 4lb and 25lb to help supply our growers in the southern Oklahoma region!
The dusting of wettable sulfur controls, kills, and prevents these nuisances in your garden:
Black Spot
Powdery Mildew
Leaf Spot
Rust and Brown Canker on roses
Thrips
Rust Mites
Red Spider Mites
It can be used in residential and commercial lawns and gardens! Remember, only VEG phases on your medicinal plants and crops!
Sometimes plants need therapy, Lost Coast Plant Therapy!
Lost Coast Plant Therapy is one of the most unique and popular pesticide/fungicide sprays on the market! We've been selling this product for over 2 years now and it's our top-selling multi-use spray! As a garden/farm support store owner, you get familiar with a lot of these products and in the insecticide/fungicide genre, it's definitely true since most of the sprays for hydroponics lean towards the commercial medicinal field where EVERYTHING has to be tested before it's brought out to sell.
These products are not able to fail for substances that are toxic to our bodies and the environment (thankfully!), so other inputs (mostly organic) are mixed to fight these critters! One of the great things and I assure you there are many, is the fact that this product doesn't affect any ladybugs or larger beneficial insects for that matter which is great since ladybugs are huge support against those crummy aphids!
Lost Coast has seven ingredients that are food-grade, cosmetic-grade (we will get to that in a minute), and also biodegradable! These ingredients make this a well-rounded concentrated formula that is able to focus on many bug and mold issues that your plants may face! I will break these down in short intervals which can also be found on the Lost coast website that will be provided below.
Soy oil is an organic food-grade substance that suffocates insects until dead! It does this by coating the entire bug with soy oil from the spray application, so any infestations that are currently there will be short-lived.
Another food-grade ingredient is peppermint oil, which if you have ever grown a mint plant act as a natural deterrent to pests and bugs! If you decide to grow mint, we recommend growing rosemary and lavender as well and spreading them in your garden, you'll find that most pests do not like any of these herbs!
Citric acid (organic) and sodium citrate are both food-grade substances that affect the pH of your plant's surface making it unlivable for any mold or mildew to survive! This is the key ingredient for the fungicide effect of Lost coast plant therapy!
Soap which acts as an emulsifier (makes sure everything stays mixed together) helps with surface tension and penetrates the insect's body causing it to dehydrate at a rapid rate!
Isopropyl alcohol and water are the last two ingredients in the formula the former actively dehydrates the bug's body and the latter is an emulsifier.
Lost coast focuses on soft-body insects and their eggs and larvae! I always recommend spraying before lights out or during the dusk time for outdoors to keep the spray from burning up your leaves from the sun's rays. This product can also be used as a soil drench to kill the eggs and larvae that may be in your media. These are the bugs and fungus issues that Lost Coast helps to eliminate and prevent for your plants:
Spider mites, russet mites, and broad mites
Fungus Gnats
Whiteflies
Thrips
Aphids
Ants
Root-knot nematodes
Earwigs
Pill bugs
And many more!
It removes mold and fungi such as:
Powdery Mildew
Mold
Botrytis aka gray mold
Blight
Leaf Rust
There are a few hydroponic stores that will give you a sample including us (when we have them!) to try out for yourself! A truly unique and amazing product for controlling and preventing pests and mold!
Mammoth CannControl, all you need is "thyme"!
Our next product down the line is one called Mammoth CannControl. Mammoth is a top-rated company down here, but not exactly for their pesticide/fungicide, more for their beneficial bacteria formula called Mammoth P! Mammoth P helps increase flower yield and is very concentrated! Mammoth also has a very concentrated silica product and starter cubes for seedlings and cuttings!
Mammoth contains a unique variety of natural ingredients that are different from the other products in this segment, which is one of my goals in writing this is to find what products stand out from its competitors.
CannControl is 3 total ingredients in its formula. All 3 provide the necessary components to make this a multi-use spray! 55% Corn Oil, 15% Thyme Oil, 30% Oleic Acid, and BAM! You got a top insecticide and fungicide product on your hands!
Corn oil, which is most commonly called cooking oil, acts as the insecticide component in the Canncontrol formula. It's used to prevent and kill aphids, mites, and other scale insects!
Thyme oil is the anti-fungicide component in the formula if you look at most organic sprays that say "fungicide" most of the time it's going to be thyme or citric acid to help combat mold and fungus and they do so in different ways! Citric acid lowers the pH on the plant surface which makes it inhospitable for mold and fungus to live on and thyme oil actually kills the pathogens on the plant!
Oleic Acid, which is a short-chain fatty acid, has herbicidal properties that act as an insecticidal soap! Killing a variety of bugs and insects that your plants may have! Oleic Acid is normally found in vegetable oil and olive oil as an 18-chain fatty acid.
The mix rate for Canncontrol is pretty concentrated.
For foliar applications, you can use 1oz or 30ml per gallon of spray for minor infestations, and for more severe infestations you use 3 oz or 90ml per gallon to get the job done!
Not all multi-use sprays organic or not can be used for soil drenches but luckily Canncontrol can! You mix 1oz per gallon of water and apply it to your growing medium to kill the eggs and larvae in the soil/media.
This product can also be used as a clone drench which is a great method for pest prevention! You mix 30ml (1oz) per gallon of water and dip your healthy rooted clones into the solution for up to 10 seconds per clone!
Use once a week as a preventative or as needed when an infestation is involved.
Can never get enough oil with Suffoil-X!
Suffoil-X by Bioworks is a highly refined mineral oil-based triple-threat product! It's also an emulsifier that can be mixed in with other pesticides/fungicides/miticide formulas that allow use for oils, except for Sulfur! I decided to use Suffoil-X by Bioworks instead of other brands like Monterey since we used that brand for the BT and Suffoil-X is also different because it's made especially for commercial use. The smallest size they carry is 2.5 Gallo bottles and go up from there! I will post links to the Monterey brand for smaller cultivators like myself too!
Most horticultural oil sprays consist of 80% mineral oil as the active ingredient and 20% other ingredients. Suffoil-X delivers a low petroleum oil content and 93% smaller droplet size that allows for faster drying time compared to other products in the genre, drying at 2 hours compared to 6 hours out of sunlight or artificial lighting.
Not only does it control insects, fungi, and mites, but it also controls viruses that are brought from insects like aphids that can carry diseases to your plants. The oils reduce the aphids' ability to transmit diseases from an infected plant to a nearby healthy plant, which is great since you can prevent that plant from affecting the whole crop.
The features and benefits of highly refined mineral oil are:
Can be used with beneficial bugs when used as directed
Minimizes the chance of plant burn
Suffocates plants in all stages
Used for organic production
Stable emulsion, making it last longer
Easily dilutes, making mixing easy
The mix rate starts at 1:100 and can be mixed to a 2:100 ratio. The 2.5 Gal of Suffoil-X can make anywhere from 250 gallons of spray to 125 gallons of spray depending on the strength you're wanting to use for the application. Always remember with any kind of spray, do not spray during light times/daylight, and do not spray if the temperature is 85-90 degrees Fahrenheit and up!
Azapro and Azamax!
Azadirachtin is the main ingredient in both products. Azapro and Azamax differences are only related to their brand names. They both have the same mix rates and the same active ingredients to handle a multitude of bugs that affect your plants.
Azamax and Azapro both contain 1.2% azadirachtin as their active ingredient and both are very similar in cost. One may be a few dollars cheaper than the other, but that's it for the most part. Azamax is made by General Hydroponics and is the more popular of the two brands while Azapro is made by Cann-Care Company out of California.
Azadarachtin acts as an insecticide, miticide, and nematicide and is formulated through an extraction process of the neem tree, mainly from the seeds that provide the purest neem seed extract, it's synthesized to create the concentrated form we see today. It's OMRI-Listed for organic use and I do want to state that this is NOT neem oil. Neem oil is less concentrated and is less effective against insects, but provides a broader diversity against fungus than azadirachtin, fighting mold, rust, and other fungal diseases.
Azadirachtin can be used against powdery mildew and a variety of plant pests that include:
Spider Mites
Broad Mites
Russet Mites
Aphids
Root Aphids
Whiteflies
Thrips
Fungus Gnat Larvae
Fungus Gnats
The mix rate is 1 tablespoon to 4 tablespoons as a foliar and 1-2 tablespoons as a root drench! Azadirachtin can be used during any plant growth stage for treatment every 7-14 days.
Side Note: For the medicinal cannabis cultivators, you can use this product in the flowering stage but I always recommend not using it once you get to the 4th week to be safe! You prefer not to spray this at all during the bloom cycle, you cannot go wrong there!
These products are some of the best that the market has to offer on organic or semi-organic pesticides/fungicides and every product is very unique from the active ingredients to the variety that it's able to control, prevent and kill.
Thankfully, we live in an era where there are MANY great products like these out there and like always, all the posts that we do are subjective and we would love to hear about any products that you guys suggest! Part 2 of this article will be coming out in the next week or two so stay tuned for that as I go over a whole new slew of products and content!
We do carry these products in our storefront located in southern Oklahoma! On that note, if you are in Ardmore Oklahoma, come pay us a visit and talk to our team on any subject or just come in and say hello!
