Chemical-Free Insect Repellant for My Garden

Recently I have noticed that bugs seem to be particularly attracted to some of my plants - if I didn't do something quickly, my mint, spring onions, lettuce and cucumber were in danger of becoming extinct. There are various natural insect repellant spray recipes around the interwebs and, as with my most of my recipes, I couldn't decide which one to use so I combined about three recipes and came up with this:

Ingredients:

• half a large brown onion, diced
• 7 cloves of garlic, chopped
• tbsp of chili powder
• hot water
• tbsp of plant-based dishwashing soap

I put the onion, garlic and chili powder into an empty jar and filled it to the top with hot water. I put the lid on it and let it steep for about two hours, until the water was no longer hot. I drained the onion/garlic/chili water through a colander then poured the liquid, plus the soap, into a spray bottle and got to work spraying all the leaves in my garden. (You might want to wear a bandana across your face so you don't pepper-spray yourself!)

I hope this works - I don't want to kill bugs, but I am sick of them eating my plants, so hopefully this will keep them away. I will post an update in the future as to the success or failure of the spray.

If you've got a vegan insect-repellant recipe that works, please leave it in the comments!

In other news, I counted six tomatoes growing in the garden, and one two-inch-long zucchini. At least some of my veggies have escaped the wrath of the insects and are off to a good start!