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Alright! This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com. Today I have another exciting episode for
you. As you guys can see, today I'm harvesting my peppers. End of the season, harvesting
peppers, but this is not a pepper harvesting video. I might have that in another video
for you guys about when to harvest your food because we are going to frost soon and then
we're going to have to pull these guys up anyways, but what today's episode is about
actually it's about pest and bug control. I know many of you guys have pest problems.
Many of you guys may not even be gardening because of the pests. You fear the pests,
like 'oh my gosh, I can't even grow anything because the bug's going to eat it,' right?
Don't fear the pests any longer. In this video we show the organic solution that you can
use to take care of the majority of your pest problems. So, the first thing I'd like to
say is, you know, before you even get the pests, it's important to prevent the pests
from happening in the first place. So, the number one way to do that, in my opinion,
is build good soil. You know, you're as healthy as the food you what, right? If you're eating
McDonalds, junk food, fast food, processed food, things in packages, bottles, and jars,
right? You're not going to be as healthy as somebody that's eating a whole foods, you
know, diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and our plants are like us. They need to be
fed good food. So, we don't want to just put, you know, soil down there and then put some
chemically made fertilizer and whatnot because the plants aren't going to get everything
they need. I encourage you guys to use the biologic organic gardening and farming methods,
which includes adding things like bacterial compost, fungal compost, the trace minerals
like the rock dust, C90, applying compost tea, the worm castings, the insect frast,
and all the other biologic agents that actually put the bacteria and fungi and other microorganisms
into your soil so hat they can ensure your plants thrive. Now, even in my garden where
I have been doing this, I do have some pest pressures. So, what we're going to talk about
today is how to deal with the pest pressures if you have them, but the goal, number one
goal, overall is to not get the pest pressures, right? By growing good healthy crops and building
your soil, you know. For example, fro us, like if your wife or husband has a flu or
a cold, right? They're sleeping right next to you in the bed, they're sharing, you know,
utensils with you, hopefully you're not sharing toothbrushes, but they'll be sick, but you
wont, that's because you have immune system. Well, plants are the same way. They have immune
systems. So, once again, build the soil so that you have healthy plants, they have a
stronger immune system, and they'll be able to fend for themselves. Think about it. For,
you know, the millions of year, trillions of year, I don't know how many, I wasn't a
history major, that the earth has been around, there was no such thing as pesticides, even
organic ones. Nobody sprayed anything. The plants literally had to fend for themselves.
The difference between then and now, among other things, was the soil. There was a lot
better soil, more nutrition in the soil, and the plants were able to have string immune
systems. Nowadays, when you're growing in imported topsoil, soils that are devoid of
minerals and the microbiologics in the soil, the plants aren't going to be as healthy.
So, number one, grow healthy plants so that you won't have to do anything else. The second
way I like to control pests is manual control. So, you know, as I've been pulling my peppers,
I've seen a couple small snails in here. So, the easiest thing is to pull them off, smush
them, compost them, get ducks or chickens and feed them to your ducks and chickens.
Manual control is always best. The only negative with manual control is if you have acreage,
you won't be able to do it. If you have a small 4-foot by 4-foot bed, I always encourage
you guys to do manual control first before spending any extra money to buy any gadgets
or gizmos or sprays to spray on your crops. Manual control is always the easiest. Hire
some neighborhood kids. Maybe you got some kids, you know, in your household, have them
find slugs and pay them a nickel. Maybe might have to pay them more than a nickel. Pay them
a quarter, maybe a dollar. Pay them a dollar for every slug they find, and that'll get
them busy, they'll learn about, you know, the importance of hard work, and you'll get
a slug free garden and you'll be like, 'okay, everyone, you get a dollar. Go out and hunt
them,' and they'll sit there all day trying to find them, right? So, healthy plants, manual
control, the next way I'd recommend is by using other kind of control. So, number one,
grow healthy plants, number 2, manual control. Oh, another thing you can do is also exclude
the pests. So, if you have heavy pest problems, you know, make hoops and grow with the remade
fabric shade cloth or clear plastic over the top of your plants so that the bugs can't
get in there to eat your stuff, right? So, exclude them. The next way I would do is when
I start to spray stuff. So, the first spray that I recommend for you guys is to spray
only water. Water is natural, it's like the rain. We're not going to emulate the rain
and just spray just droplets, but we're going to spray on a pressurized spray at high pressure.
I have had videos on tis in the past. It's called the bug blaster. That's the device
I use in my garden when I have pest issues to spray them off. Works good in soft-bodied
insects like the aphids and whiteflies and whatnot, spray them off, and that should be
the end of them. If I have a persistent issue and the other ways that I control them don't
work, I have a pretty big outbreak, then I'm going to do what you guys are going to learn
next. So, I've been using this technique myself in my very garden for about a year now, and
nothing that I've tested has worked better, and this is super simple, super easy and anybody
can do it. So, what we're going to have on todays show is a special guess. We got Josh
Cunnings of the Boogie Brew Company. Now, formally it is the Boogie Brew Product because
as a grower himself, and he grew lots of California tomatoes if you know what I mean, he grew
the best California tomatoes ever, and the fertilizer chemicals got too expensive, so
he made up his own natural organic solution, and guess what? Besides growing California
tomatoes, that stuff also works on everything. I mean, as the results, you can see them,
it's doing really good, but besides just having good nutrition, you also sometimes need to
control pests, because we can't be like, 'there's no pests, there's no pests, there's no pests,'
and avoid them because then they're going to take over. So, he has a natural organic
method to control pests that, you know, that I use in my garden. So, I guess, without further
ado, let's get into Josh's clip and let him show you how deal with pests and actually
how he's doing it in my very garden to take care of pests for me, and I like that a lot.
This is Josh Cunnings and I'm appearing on behalf of John Kohler here at his own garden,
in his home town of northern California, and as you just saw, his peppers have all been
doing really well, his strawberries have been basting. In fact, 90% of John's garden has
been absolutely raging all summer long. Here we are deep in the summer, the garden just
keeps on perpetually going, but just like all growers, John has suffered a couple of
relatively minor disease, pest, and fungus disease pressure problems. Speaking of one,
it's right here behind me. His squash plants, and it's PM. It's called powdery mildew, and
right there I took the liberty of plucking one of his particularly afflicted PM squash
leaves, and as you can see, it looks like, you know, snow has been unceremoniously sort
of sprayed, if you will, on his leaves. Now, this is not a healthy sign. This is a fungus
that's attacking his squash leaves, and is actually quite prevalent here in Sonoma County,
which is a coastally influenced region, and also has a big grape republic behind it. A
lot of grape monoculture growing, and so that has led to conditions which have allowed PM,
powdery mildew, to run rampant amongst the grower here in north Cal, and also John has
been suffering from a big problem, a pest pressure that's occurring right now in his
tree collards. Let's go to the other part of his garden and take a peek at that. Let's
touch on the subject of pesticides. If you go into just about any hardware stores pest
control aisle, you can smell a noxious odor oozing from the virtual smorgasbord of chemical
substances. Amazingly, most people seem to accept this as perfectly normal without even
considering the dangerous effects to our environments. America produces a mind-boggling 5 billion
pounds of pesticide products each year alone. That's almost 20 pound of poison for every
man, woman and child in the US, annually. Unbelievably, pesticides originate form chemical
warfare products. Yes, the same fearsome substances developed by the Nazis and subsequently expanded
into our weapons arsenals, creating a perfect trickledown opportunity for the military industrial
complex, who could profit from feeding the same poisons back to the entire human population.
Just look at Monsanto. Creators of that lethal chemical used in the Vietnam War, Agent Orange,
and who are now a worldwide pesticide conglomerate. The question is, why? The industries limits
are endless. Is it a runaway train that just can't be stopped? Yea, are there any grounds
for the existence of these products to begin with? Barely one tenth of a percent of chemicals
actually reach their target. The other 99.9% goes straight into our environment. Where
does is it all end up? I'll tell you where it goes. It bioaccumulates up the entire food
chain, polluting all of our ground water and leaving a cancerous footprint in the organs
and tissues of each and every one of us. Now, here's what you can do about all this. Just
like John says, 'vote against this disgusting and poisonous scam with your dollars,' and
the good news is, that while the false promise of chemical pesticides has become a world-wide
tragedy, there are powerful and natural recipes that flat out work against bugs a disease.
Today, I'm going to show you how you can easily win any bug battle using my clean, green,
Dr. Broaner's Salsuds soap, and neem oil recipe. Let's go take a look at John's garden, where
his famous tree collards have been suffering from a particularly ugly infestation. Through
JK's uber garden jungle we go, and I passed his stricken tree collard greens here and
let's go take a peek at what he has over here. Wow. Well, what do we have here? These look
like some seriously infested tree collard greens, and just what are these bugs and the
resident colony? Who are these little suckers who've been inhabiting John's hapless tree
collard leaves? I mean, my god, they've simply gone to town here, I'm afraid. Any of you
(unclear) who are entomologists out there, we could use some help in identifying these
little suckers. They almost look somewhat like orange, overlarge ladybugs. Definitely
some sort of Romani bug, or a leaf miner type creature. Oh, man. This is a pretty serious
infestation. Well, we're going to win this battle with our favorite all time pest control
recipe, and we're going to keep John's garden free of these nasty critters once and for
all. I've yet to find a better all-around pest and disease controlling recipe than the
one that I'm about to tell you of, but first of all, you're going to need any type of quart
or pint-sized jar that's party filled with warm water, alright? This part is important,
and we'll talk about why you need this item in a minute. Now, these here are the two vital
ingredients which make up our boogie bug battling super formula. Dr. Brauner's salsud soap and
cold press neem oil. This one's called, appropriately enough, super cleaning. Alright, so, now,
Dr. Brauner's, a lot of you are familiar with their famous line of castile soaps, which
are considers the world's finest quality, containing only the purest of ingredients,
with no harsh or caustic agent in their recipe. It's the only allowed soap, for instance,
used in places like the Havasupai Indian reservation, which is a pristine environment located deep
in the depths of the grand canyon, where the native tribal dwelling residents have insisted
that their land be respected and that their soil ecosystem remains completely clean, pure,
and unpolluted. Now, this is not your more typical Brauner's soap, like their poplar
castile line of peppermint, almond, or, for instance, their lavender body soap, but it's
their highest suds formula. It's made for increased detergent power, and you can find
this in your local health food stores dish and laundry soaps section. Now, as is typical
with Dr. Brauner's labeling, there's a ton of information on here. It's made basically
from some of the cleanest soap substances on earth, including coconut fatty acids. Now,
what I love about this product are its fantastic penetrating, surfactant, and wetting agent
capabilities. It is a superb spreader sticker agent and it can be used as a valuable mixing
ingredient with a whole host of foliar foods for your plants. The cool thing about Dr.
Brauner's is that they give you 1% Canadian fir and Canadian spruce needle oil. These
are pure, essential oils from fir and spruce, and which are added to increase the soaps
purifying powers. There's been a lot of research indicating the benefits of pine oil to plants,
including a fair degree of bug repellency, as well as in aiding nitrogen uptake, but,
of course, our true hero in the boogie bug battle is undoubtedly neem oil. This has become
my favorite brand. It's called, appropriately enough, super clean neem, and what makes this
particular neem oil so effective is the fact that it's actually obtained from a truly cold
pressed oil, not just expeller pressed. Now, those of you who are familiar with good quality
olive oil will know the difference between expeller pressed and a truly cold pressed
*** oil, and clean neem fulfills its name with its purity and quality. Now, let's not
forget that in India, where I believe the neem tree actually originates from, throughout
history, they've experienced devastating locust infestations, which have been known to wipe
out an entire countywide region of all green plant life. The only plant which is left entirely
untouched by these massive locust scourges where they come thought and they consume every
piece of green vegetative matter that they can devour is the neem tree. Now, that right
there indicates, to me, neems supreme bug repelling abilities. Now, neem is actually
great for human health. It's good for the immune system, for infections, viruses and
all disorders of the human musculous gladital system. There is a multitude of benefits from
neem, and I'm not going to pontificate to you about it all here, but you can go to a
website called neemfoundation.org and you can learn more of this truly amazing panacea.
All parts of the neem tree, from its bark to the leaves, the fruits and indeed the oil
from its seeds, contains beneficial properties. The tree even grows in arid climates, it thrives
in poor soils, and it's actually even able to restore depleted soils of lost nutrients.
Now, believe it or not, a giant chemical and pharmaceutical corporation, I believe it was
a company knows as WR Gracie. They actually tried to patent the neem tree for their own
profit-driven usage, and by the 1990's, they were defeated in their efforts to monopolize
such a valuable natural species by coalition of farmers from India and environmental activist
in Europe, who were able to get the international patent office to successfully revoke the patent.
I mean, how can you earn the exclusive rights to a native tree, right? It's ridiculous,
and it's highly indicative of the greed which these chemicals pesticide companies will go
to in order to get a stranglehold on the worlds entire farming infrastructure. The truth is,
neem is highly effective as a natural and potent pesticide on over 90% of invasive bug
species without any long term adaptation or resistance by the target insects to it's multitude
of natural compounds. Now, keep in mind that this is not the case with those chemical pesticides,
which the manufacturers have to keep reformulating at they unleash every stronger compounds in
an effort to outpace the bugs own populations abilities with each new generation to build
increased resistance to mankind's latest salve of poisons. Now, you talk about and endlessly
toxic and deadly cycle, which is being maintained by our corporatocracies grip on world farming
and one which is entirely, in my opinion, unnecessary to boot. So, you're going to take
these two products and, as I said earlier, it's very important to use a warm jar with
water and these items make up the basic recipe. You're going take your jar, and you are going
to add 2 tablespoons per gallon of each ingredient to your jar. Now, today, because the weather's
warm, the neem oil actually possesses good viscosity and as you can see, it's flowing
pretty easily out of the container, but for those of you in colder climates, or if you've
stored your neem in a cooler environment, where it can easily solidify in the bottle,
it will be necessary for you to place the neem bottle in a bowl of warm water for a
few minutes first, so that you do have a good flowing highly viscous substance. So, you
see how I'm putting the neem into the water there? I'm actually supposed to put the required
2 tablespoons of oil into the water. This is just for demonstration, and look at that.
It's already kind of globulating. As you can see, it won't mix properly. Now, here's where
the magic happens. You're going to take your jar, you're going to add in an equal quantity.
In this case, 2 tablespoons. Just for the videos sake, I'm going to approximate it,
of Dr. Brauner's salsud soap, and we're going to start mixing it up a little bit and I can
see already it's starting to form a cloud. Now, we're going to make a neem milk shake.
Just shake it. See that? In seconds, you have a wonderfully emulsified substance, which
is going to be far more easily utilized and fused across the plant tissue foliage, allowing
for much better penetration and overall coverage. Now, some portions additives that you can
elect to use are products like rosemary and clove oils. Even essential oils like peppermint,
cinnamon, and orange oil, which should all be judiciously applied, of course, and these
can be useful in particularly stubborn bug infestations. Rosemary, for instance is well
suited to work extremely well against spider mites, although, in my experience the basic
soap and neem recipe has always sufficed for me. Clove oil is also known as one of the
only reliable killers of the mites own eggs, whereas with the neem oil, the reproductive
cycle will get disrupted, but it's going to take a few sprays applications for that to
occur. So, it can be helpful to use these other types of products if you really want
to destroy the eggs, etc. Now, there's quite a few organic pest control products out there,
with these kinds of oils. These particular one here is made by OAP, organic ad products,
and it's called redbugs. Now, I've gone and added a couple of capfuls of it for good measure
to the soap and neem base, which I already have here in a premixed jar, so that we can
aggressively go after JK's own bug colony here. Now, today, I'm going to show you how
I love to use this bug-blasting recipe with my favorite ever machine. John's very own
commercial atomizing sprayer. This particular unit is called the Hudson FOG. It's very well
built. It's made by Hudson, who also happens to make my favorite hose and sprayer, the
chameleon sprayer. Now, this sprayer is a wickedly handy tool for any serious gardener.
I was a grower for years, and I trust this machine implicitly. It just makes the time
consuming job of spraying so much quicker, and it allows for truly complete and total
penetration of the plant canopy. Moreover, the atomization of the emulsified neem soap
blend renders a true fog particle sized delivery, which helps to provide a better diffusion
across more surface areas and it also delivers the beneficial neem compounds in a kinder
and gentler form to the plant leaves stomata, or their pores. Indeed, neem is generally
regarded as the least clogging of all horticultural oils to leaf stomata's, and I personally believe
that some of neems known nutritional benefits to plants, like increased nitrogen utilization,
are actually made available to plant tissue when applied this way in concert with the
salsuds Teflon-like microionization, and delivered in a truly atomized fog molecule. Now, how
can I say this so confidently to you? Well, when I used to grow, and when I was consistent
with a neem-fogging schedule, my plants were always clearly greener and overall certainly
much healthier. It seemed to shine them up nicely as well, and propose growers have used
neem oil for the purpose of beautification for decades, utilizing it as a secret weapon
to help them win their rose contest. So, when it comes to conducting a serious pest control
campaign, you really wan tot employ the best technology that's available to you and for
me, this machine is simply imperative. Now, combining its use with the supreme recipe
like neem and salsuds soap makes pest and disease infestations a nonissue. Also, neem
appears to bear no harm to bees or beneficial insect populations, like the good bugs who
are higher up the food chain, who are consuming the leaf-munching bugs. Similarly, any neem
oil residue that makes it's way down to your soil will biodegrade quickly and it will not
pose a threat to beneficial soil organisms, thereby aiding your soil and maintaining its
critical web of microbial life. Now, always remember to please use a different spray applicator
device for compost tea than the unit that you use to apply neem or these other horticultural
oils. Now, this is because the delicate microbial populations in your tea will easily become
smothered by any leftover soap and oil residues that are in your spray tank. I strongly recommend
using a machine like this fogger, or at least a good quality backpack type sprayer, for
the neem applications, and alternating the spraying with a unit like the chameleon hose
end sprayer to shower your whole garden with compost tea in between. You know, if fact,
if you find yourself having it apply the neem more than 2 times per week, because of serious
pest or disease pressure, it's a great idea to spray with a compost tea, like for instance,
our boogie brew, on alternating days. Now, this will help in preventing too thick of
a waxy oil coating that can build up on the leaf surfaces, and it will also provide your
plants with a multitude of the tea benefits as well. The best thing about maintaining
a regularly schedule foliar regime that alternate between compost tea and neem sprays is that
you will simply never experience healthier plants, and it's extremely cost effective
to boot. The key is using great recipes. Be that a quality compost tea or, in this case,
a natural pesticide and fungicide with agent like neem and the salsud soap, whilst implementing
badass spraying technology, like the atomizing Hudson fogger sprayer. If you do this regularly,
your plants can't help but dance. Now, let's get down to business, and let me show you
how, just like al Pacino said so famously in his movie Scarface, you know, 'you want
to mess with me, you say hello to my little friend, you nasty bugs.' So, I'm going o to
add my neem milks contents to it. This is the jar that I mixed earlier. Now, in this
case the Hudson fog uses a 2-gallon base tank, alright? So, I've actually used a total of
4 tablespoons each of salsud and neem oil. So, it's a good idea to actually fill the
tank with plain water first, like I've done here, and then add the mixture afterwards,
alright? Because that allows the foam levels to not come up too highly. You want to set
the tank base down on a level flat surface where you can easily see the connections and
it's very important to attack the motor carefully and always check the entire circumferential
area of the metal clamp first. Okay, very important. Now, if it's crooked, then you
want to remove it and reattach in a neutral and solid manner as possible. When in doubt,
don't take the chance of spraying and having the unit detached itself on you, spilling
the contents everywhere. Speaking of which, it's a good idea to wear work clothes because
there's always going to be some spillage, although I can assure you the ingredients
are, in my humble opinion, relatively benign and totally harmless to human health. Unlike
those evil chemical sprays, you certainly don't have to armor yourself in HAZMAT gear
first to defend yourself against deadly poisons. Now, here's how I like to carry the Hudson
FOG machine. With the strap on one shoulder only and the air intake pointing away from
my body. What this allows me to do is temporarily pressurize the sprayer by blocking the air
intake with my own hand if I need to, which can help when the liquid that's remaining
in the sprayer starts to drop down to low levels. Here's a brief demo of what I'm talking
about. So, I've holstered my machine properly, I've check it's connection, I've attached
the power chord, in a responsible and tangle-free manner, I have the perfect recipe inside which
has been properly mixed first, and I'm ready to go and lay waste to those bugs. Say hello
to my little friend, you gnarly bugs. Here we come with our clean green neem. Let's really
go and lay waste to those evil bugs that have been infesting his tree collard leaves. Say
hello to our little clean green neem machine you evil bugs. Now, I'm also going to apply
some clean neem magic to John's squash leaves over here, which have suffered of powdery
mildew affliction, as we were talking about earlier. The neem oil disrupts the mold's
spore's hyphae back, or their structure, and it helps tremendously to prevent reinfection
with its supreme natural fungicide qualities. Here we go. Thanks for checking out my boogie
battle of the bug episode here on growingyourgreens. I truly hope this helps to motivate you in
maintaining a healthy pest and disease free garden environment, and more importantly,
I urge you all to speak out about the dangers of chemical pesticides. Tell your garden acquaintances,
your neighbors, your family and your friends that there is a healthier and more cost-effective
method instead. From JK's own uber patch right here in North Cal, this is boogies message
to all growers that there are no excuses for using poisonous warfare products in your gardens.
Health is our only wealth and the planets future lies in more responsible stewardship.
Alright, so, I hope you guys enjoyed that episode with Josh as a special guest. Hey,
please post your comments down below. Let me know if you wan tot see more of Josh, or
less of Josh. I think he's a good guy, and, I mean, that's the method I use to control
pests in my garden, and I believe you should, too. Now, yes, I have that, you know, commercial
heavy duty Hudson fogger, and I love that thing, man. I mean, if you have a small garden,
you do not need to get the Hudson fogger, unless you're a guy and you like gadgets like
I do, but if you have any size of raised beds or, you know, acreage, it's defiantly something
you want to consider. Now, yes, they are expensive, you know. A more easier way to do that without
getting a Hudson sprayer, if you have a few potted plants with bug issues, you know, just
get s spray bottle. You could spray it in a spray bottle. Make sure it's shooken up
well. Another way you could do it like Josh said, het a backpack sprayer, or a pump sprayer.
Also, like Josh said, you want to be sure to have a different sprayer for your organic
insect controls like the neem and Dr. Brauner's and the compost teas. Don't, like, use the
same sprayer. Definitely a good tip to remember, and, you know, once again, I want to encourage
you guys to start growing. Don't let pest issues get you down. After listening to this
episode, you know one of the simplest and easiest ways to deal with the majority of
pests, you know, that I've used myself in my garden with great success. If you're interested
in getting the Hudson sprayer and the clean neem and Dr. Brauner's, hey, please check
the link below. I've negotiated a really special deal for you guys to help save you guys some
money and allow you to grow organically and control your pests so that you and your family
and the earth do not have to deal with the repercussions of toxic chemicals on your food
and putting it into the planet. Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
We'll see you next time, and remember; keep on growing.