Nicotine - Useful And Cheapest Pesticide
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The cheapest powerful pesticide is
nicotine, which is now difficult to buy, but is easily made by boiling
four ounces of non-filter-tip cigarettes (or half a pound of
filter-tips) in a gallon of water for half an hour. Strain the clear
brown liquid through a nylon stocking and it will keep several weeks in
a stoppered bottle. Dilute with two parts of water to one of nicotine
for an anti-caterpillar spray or for anything hard to kill. Water it
along rows of young peas and beans when their leaves are eaten out of
shape by the pea and bean weevil, a tiny beetle that is clay-colored
and hides under clods so that you rarely see it. Mix a quart of the
solution with an ounce of soft soap or soap flakes and spray on spring
cabbage plants, broccoli and late Brussels sprouts in the autumn to
kill mealy cabbage aphides, cabbage white fly and cabbage moth
caterpillars before they burrow into the hearts. This strength kills
celery and chrysanthemum leaf miners.
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If you have a Euonymus hedge, syringe it
thoroughly with nicotine in November to kill the hibernating
caterpillars of the small ermine moth which are the curse of these
hedges, and the winter stage of the blackfly on broad beans. These also
winter on Viburnums (all species), and if everyone sprayed these we
might wipe out this pest. Squirt nicotine hard into the gnarled bark at
the base of old rose bushes in November because it is here that
greenfly hibernate.
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Non-smokers can obtain ashtray emptying
from cinemas and public houses, and the best way to keep free nicotine
is as cigarette ends, for though a liquid can be drunk by mistake, no
one is going to mistake a tin full of fag ends for sweets. Do not spray
it on anything you are going to eat within a fortnight, but wait for
the rain to wash it off, and label any ready-boiled POISON. Though
nicotine costs nothing when made from boiled cigarette ends, and is
powerful, keep it for weevils, large caterpillars and anything tough,
wash your hands after using, and remember it is a poison. It is
harmless to ladybirds and their larvae, and hoverfly larvae.
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