DIY Natural Garden Pest Spray

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” ~ Margaret Atwood
For many of us, Spring means gardening. Spending our days in the warmth of the sun, tilling our soil and nurturing our plant babies.

Unfortunately, it can also mean pests. There’s nothing worse than spending weeks (or months) of effort caring for our plants, only to have them ravaged by bugs.
Fortunately, there are ways to deter pests and protect your beloved plants - without using dangerous chemicals.

There are some budget friendly essential oils that are very effective at repelling bugs, slugs, and snails without being harmful to you or your plants.

Here are a few:

Peppermint: a natural insecticide, this oil will work on ants, beetles, flies, fleas, aphids, and squash bugs, as well as repel spiders.

Cedarwood: this oil is great for keeping slugs and snails away.

Orange: because of it’s high limonene content this oil is lethal to flies, fleas, and fire ants. It also repels silverfish, roaches, and mosquitos!
Simply add 5 drops of each oil into a 4 oz spray bottle, and fill with water. Spritz on plants as needed (shaking before each application).
No scary chemicals, just natural protection.
Do you use essentail oils in the garden? Tell us your favorite natural methods for keeping pests away from plants.

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"Our Backyard" Unit week 1 - Garden

Schools in our area are all letting the kids out for summer, but not us.  School time has become part of our daily routine, and Little Guy really has fun with it, so we're just going to keep charging ahead.  We are beginning an Our Backyard unit.  In it, we will be covering Garden/Plants, Birds, Butterflies, and Backyard Critters (ie.  bugs, snails, worms, etc).   

This week we began learning about the Garden.  We started our week off by reading The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle. 

We talked about the life cycle of a plant, and put our story cards in order. 

*Can you tell Little Guy was involved in the set up of this pic?  Race cars galore!

I found a TON of really great printables over at Homeschool Creations.  I used quite a few pages of their Garden Preschool Pack this week.  Here's their sample of what's in the pack:

  Nick Jr. also had some great Dora coloring pages that went well with our theme.  You can find those HERE.

We did a flower color sort using a tray and a lei that I found at the Dollar Tree.  I just cut the lei and pulled all the flowers off.  They were perfect for Little Guy to pick up using his kiddie chopsticks.

I also found this butterfly plant kit for Little Guy.  He was pretty excited about it.  He's been checking it every day  hour to see if it has sprouted!

He added water to the disk to make the soil,

added the soil to the pot,

pressed in the seeds,

and placed the cup on top for a "greenhouse" effect.

We can't wait to observe how it grows!

My original plan for this bead sorting activitiy was to use the kiddie chopsticks, but the beads were just too bumpy for Little Guy to get a grip on them, so he ended up using his hands.  Afterward, he had a great time just pouring the beads from one pot to another. 

Little Guy's favorite activity this week was the Bead Balance.  We just used golf tees in a styrofoam cube for Little Guy to balance his bumpy beads on.  It was so fun!  He would try to do it as quickly as possible and then get frantic and they would fall off.

I love the look of concentration on his face in this pic:

Tada!!

We also worked with the 3 part cards from Homeschool Creation's Preschool Pack, and I made some cutting practice strips using flower stickers. 

Next week in Our Backyard themed unit, we will be focusing on Birds.

Here are the books we read this week:



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