Insecticides from soap are not new.  In fact, your grandmother and even her mother probably used them.  For the home gardener, especially flower and herb gardeners, soap insecticide is a staple.

Making it is easy once you know the basic idea behind insecticidal soap.  They work best during the worst time of insect infestations—usually in the fall.  While not exactly organic, insecticidal soaps are non-toxic, clean, and non-polluting.

You can purchase pre-mixed insecticidal soap at the gardening store, organics store, or from other outlets.  Often, people are under the impression that their liquid dish soap can be used too, if they just dilute it with water.  That's actually wrong.


The soap used in most types of dish, laundry, and even hand and shower soap contains detergents.  Those detergents are not necessarily harmful to you and they will kill insects, but they will also wash off the waxy substance your plants coat their leaves with to prevent dehydration (called phytotoxicity).

Soap without detergent should also not contain an oxidizer, which can have the same effect.  Most soaps labeled “non-detergent, mild” will be free of both chemicals.  Natural soaps usually are made from a simple alkali (potassium/soft or sodium/hard) and fatty acid chains (plant or animal derivatives).

A natural soap bar from your health food store, such as Fels-Naptha, can be the base for making your own.  As can natural, soft soaps like Ivory (without detergent).

How To Make Insecticidal Soap

To make your own Insecticide soap, all you'll need is a bar of a natural soap as above and water.  Those bars are usually 5-1/2 ounces.  Natural dish soap is even easier to use, but most dish soaps contain detergent to whisk away grease, so they aren't good for this.  A cheese grater, vegetable grater, or sharp knife is your tool of choice and then a clean, empty spray bottle or mister to deliver the soap to the plants.

Put a pot with about four cups of water on the stove and begin the boiling process.  While that's happening, then take about half your soap bar (cut it in half, or just grate it down to half).  Take those gratings and dump them into the boiling water and stir.  Stir until the soap is dissolved, which will take just a couple of minutes.  Wait one more minute, just to be sure (still stirring) and turn off the heat.

Keep stirring the solution until it's cooled or manually cool by setting the pan into cool water.  Pour the liquid soap from the pan into a container like a jar, jug, etc.  Do not pour it into your spray bottle yet.  This solution, believe it or not, is your concentrate.

Label the container well so that someone doesn't think it's something else.  Then mix it at about 2 tablespoons of concentrate per quart.  Most spray bottles are either a little over a cup (1 /4 quart) or half a quart in size.  You can go up to double on the concentrate if you'd like, as you wish.  Some bugs are hardier than others.

When and Where to Spray

The soap works by hitting the bugs directly, so you'll need to spray when the bugs are out.  Early and mid-evening are the common bug times in most gardens and flower patches, so that's when you'll need to spray.  Mist the leaves, stems, and any bugs or concentrations of bugs you see.

Most soft-bodied insects such as aphids and mites as well as flies will be killed by soap sprays.  Commercial varieties at a 1% soap-to-water mix have an 80% kill rate.  The soap kills insects by dehydration and asphyxiation combined.

In most bugs, the fatty acids in the soap break down cell membranes in the bugs, causing the cells to collapse.  Since most bugs breathe through their skin, this leads to respiratory problems.  In other insects, the fatty acids can block cell metabolism, leading to an inability to grow, metamorphose, or otherwise continue the life cycle.

In either case, it's effective.  After using it for two or three days, you'll start noticing a distinct decline in the number of insects in your garden.

The best part about insecticidal soap is that it's short-term and has a short life cycle.  It won't hang around for more than 48 hours and is usually gone within two to three hours.  Commercial versions of these sprays are often used by organic growers to keep the pest population off of freshly-picked produce in transit from field to processing.

Making your own is a cheap, easy, and non-toxic solution to taking care of insects.  That concentrate will last a long time.

Please visit Organic Lifetsyle Blog regularly to find out more about organic and healthy lifestyle.

Buy Natural Insecticidal Soap

	Safer Brand Insect Killing Soap - 32 oz Spray 5110 List Price: $12.99 Sale Price: $5.18 Average Rating:
	The Safer Brand Insect Killing Soap utilizes the power of potassium salts of fatty acids to weaken the insect�s waxy protective outer shell. Targets and kills aphids, earwigs, grasshoppers, harlequin bugs, leafhoppers, mealy bugs, mites, plant bugs, psyllids, sawfly larvae, soft scales, spider mites, squash bugs, blossom thrips and whiteflies.

	Safer Brand Insect Killing Soap - 16 oz Concentrate 5118 List Price: $16.99 Sale Price: $8.34 Average Rating:
	The Safer Brand Insect Killing Soap utilizes the power of potassium salts of fatty acids to weaken the insect�s waxy protective outer shell. Targets and kills aphids, earwigs, grasshoppers, harlequin bugs, leafhoppers, mealy bugs, mites, plant bugs, psyllids, sawfly larvae, soft scales, spider mites, squash bugs, blossom thrips and whiteflies.

	Espoma Organic Earth-Tone Insecticidal Soap - 24 oz Spray IS24 List Price: $6.49 Sale Price: $6.53
	Approved for organic gardening. Controls aphids, whiteflies, and mites on contact. Made from plant oils, not animal fatty acids. For use indoors, outdoors, and in greenhouses on: Fruit and nut trees, corn, melons, tomatoes, vegetables, figs and small frui

	Espoma Organic Earth-Tone Insecticidal Soap - 16 oz Concentrate ISC16 List Price: $9.49 Sale Price: $7.26 Average Rating:
	CONC Approved for organic gardening. Controls aphids, whiteflies and mites on contact. Made from plant oils; not animal fatty acids. Works fast - within hours.

	12 each: Bonide Bon-Neem Ready To Use Insecticidal Soap (025) Sale Price: $125.13
	Sold as one unit. (1 unit = 12 each.) Quart. Neem oil spray kills insects, mites and controls diseases on vegetables, fruits, shrubs, trees, flowers and perennials. All natural. Made from Neem oil with insecticidal soap ...

	Woodstream 5002 Houseplant Insecticidal Soap List Price: $8.02 Sale Price: $5.04
	24oz houseplant soap. Ready-to-use spray kills destructive soft-bodied insects such as aphids, mites, mealybugs and other listed insects. Natural, bio-degrades within 48 hours. 24 oz. trigger spray bottle.