Tobacco, natural pesticide?

[seedcorn]

Tabacco juice will kill white grubs and wireworms. Not sure what it does to earthworms alth so I can't think it would be good.

The nicotein in tobacco is systemic so I'd never use it on vegetables.

Best reason to grow tobacco is to hang in chicken house as it will take all little critters out of there.

 

[Ridgerunner]

4GB - I know that the tobacco plants are susceptible to the same things that tomatoes are, even the hornworm.

Interestingly, there are two different hornworms, the tobacco hornworm and the tomato hornworm. I can't remember which is which and I am too lazy to look it up this morning, but you can tell the difference by the color of the horn and the number of white spots. Dad grew tobacco as a cash crop so I have picked a lot of horned worms off tobacco. We grew tomatoes in the garden. I never noticed the difference in the two until I read about it.

 

[ducks4you]

Here's Ron's thread on growing tobacco:
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=26951
Maybe we should see what HE has to say about his experience.

BTW, I have 100 tobacco seeds, and I am starting some inside that are going to be planted around my cistern this year. I think they're a very pretty plant, and my DH intends to try drying them in our barn loft, and smoking the harvested crop, rolled into cigars. I understand that horsemen used to de-worm their horses and mules by feeding a single tobacco leaf, on a regular basis, just like we now rotate between 5 different chemical wormers.

 

[insiderart]

I like growing the ornamental tobaccos. They are pretty. I used to use various species of nicotiana in my viral work. Usually easy to grow, and easy to spot infected plants. Just weed out and throw away in the trash anything suspicious.

You can use the leaves in bug tea spray. Though I have forgotten the whole recipe for that. I'm sure it's on the net somewhere.

 

[ducks4you]

You can use the leaves in bug tea spray. Though I have forgotten the whole recipe for that. I'm sure it's on the net somewhere.

I'D like that, if you can find it.

 

[insiderart]

Ok still looking for the recipe.. I used to get Organic Gardening magazine back in the day. It had tons of tips like the "bug tea".

But in the mean time here are some other organic control recipes:

http://www.gardenersnet.com/spray.htm

http://gardening.about.com/u/ua/naturalorganiccontrol/Homemade-Garden-Remedies.htm

http://www.ghorganics.com/page9.html

I can't remember all the ingredients.. pyrethrum leaves, tobacco leaves... hmmm....