Organic Farming: Using Neem as a natual organic insecticide

Neem is a tree found primarily in India. Neem has been used for a long time for a variety of purposes in India, such as a natural toothbrush, its dried leaves are used when packing clothes so as to protect against insects. In addition, the oils from Neem are used as part of making soap for bathing and for cleaning. Going further on this line, Neem is very helpful against insects and pests, and is an integral part of organic principles. For organic farming, it is mandatory that any treatment of insects and pests be done without using chemical insecticides; it does not prevent the use of insecticides, only that they should be naturally occurring materials.
Neem makes for an excellent insecticide. It acts in a different way from chemical insecticides; you apply a chemical insecticide and the insects / pests drop dead or run away. However, Neem acts in a different way. You cannot apply Neem based insecticide, and expect to see the insects dying off in droves. Neem acts to subvert the natural behavior of insects, affecting them internally. So, in some time, you will start to see the insects unable to eat, unable to create eggs or young larvae, in fact, insects seem to forget how to do their normal behavior, and eventually leads to the dying off of the population. This takes time to happen, so the gardener needs to be patient.
Further, the effect of Neem seems to affect only those insects who are categorized as chewing or sucking, so you can stop worrying that all the pollen spreading bees will die off after you apply neem. You of course need to be a bit careful, not using the Neem insecticide during the daytime, instead using it either in the morning or the evening. This way, you do not coat the insects with the liquid, instead the bugs deal with the dried insecticide.
More technical: You need to be careful of what you buy for this purpose. Many stores do not have Neem labelled as an insecticide because of regulations. When you buy one, be sure that it has the following on the label - Azadirachtin. You should take care to buy a Neem product that has 'Azadirachtin' with a high content, and not some substitute that contains hydrophobic extract (will not be powerful enough, but you would not know that and would be disappointed with the results). Also, if you have a pond in your garden, be sure that you do not spray the neem into the pond.
Further, Neem works from inside the plant as well, since the Neem is absorbed by the plant and goes inside the tissues. As and when the insects start consuming the plant, they feel the effect of the Neem insecticide. For some insects, they consume the insecticide, and others get repelled by the smell.
Neem needs to be mixed with water, with around 1 ounce of the insecticide with around a gallon of water. You also need to apply the insecticide on a regular basis, maybe around once every 10-14 days. Further, since useful insects such as bees and lady bugs don't eat the plant, they don't feel any effects of the insecticide. Also, you need to spray the insecticide solution on the potting soil as well.

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Kitchen Garden: Organic farming: Using organic insecticides

If you are into organic farming (or if you are following organic principles for your kitchen garden), then it is very important for you to know all about organic insecticides. One of the problems quote in traditional ways of farming is the use of chemical / synthetic pesticides that leave residues that make their way into animals and humans, and also end up polluting the soil and water. So, what is an organic insecticide ? It is a substance made from natural ingredients that is used for repelling insects and pests; you still need to repel pests and insects even if you go organic.
Organic insecticides are also specialized, in the sense that certain insecticides work on different insects / pests, and you need to do the necessary research to ensure that you have identified the pest you need to get rid of, and what insecticide you need to use. Before making that decision though, ensure that you have actually reviewed that you do have an insecticide or pest problem. Just because an insect is eating away the leaves from your plant does not mean that the plant or the produce is getting harmed (plants can take a loss of upto 25-33% of their leaf cover before their growth is harmed).
Further, ensure that you have also checked out that there are no natural predators that you can use; for example, certain bugs eat insects or pests as a part of nature, and using that solution might work out better. However once you have decided that you have a pest problem that cannot be solved by any other means, then you need to use an organic insecticide.

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Rat eating plant found in Phillipines

Not many people know that there are plants that eat meat as well. Say again ? Plants that eat meat ? Yes. There have plants such as the pitcher plant and sundew that eat meat. But humans need not be worried as yet. In a recent discovery by scientists, a plant that can eat rats has been found on Mount Victoria in Palawan, central Philippines. The plant has been named in honour of Sir David Attenborough. The plant has a pitcher which attracts insects and rats, and then takes nutrition from these animals (link to article):

The new discovery measures up to 30 centimeters in diameter and is formed by a tendril which inflates into a large cup-shaped trap. McPherson told CNN: "Around the mouth of the pitcher are secretions of nectar which attracts insects and small animals. The rim has lots of waxy downward-pointing ridges which help prey fall directly into the pitcher.
"These plants grow in really harsh areas where soil quality is very poor -- often pure gravel or sand. Catching insects allows the plant to augment nutrients that it otherwise wouldn't have access to." "These plants have evolved to catch insects. But on rare occasions they do catch rats and mice. The first reports of these plants catching rats was made in the 19th century by a British explorer called Spenser St John," McPherson said.

This is very interesting for those people who see a very clear separation between vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. If a plant can itself eat meat, then that separation starts to wither away.

How to start an Organic Garden - tips

What do you mean by Organic Gardening ?
Organic Gardening primarily means not using synthetic products such as fertilizers and pesticides. It means working much more closely with nature, and using natural means to increase the level of ingredients and essential materials such as nitrogen to the soil, and using natural means to counter pests such as insects.
An important part of going organic is that you need to change your style of dealing with problems. In normal gardening, where you do not have to follow organic principles, you can deal with pests once they occur by treating them with pesticide; you can deal with scarcity of nutrients by adding fertilizer. If you are following organic gardening principles, what you really need to do is to try and prevent problems rather than having to deal with them as they occur. Taking the initial steps to make your garden healthier results in having fewer problems to deal with and healthier plants, fewer pest and disease problems.
As a part of this, you need to make sure that your soil is healthy, has all the required nutrients, that you take care to ensure that the plants you are planting are healthy (and you have enough knowledge of the plants you are planting in terms of their requirements and their growth cycles), that you check your plants on a regular basis and have setup a frequency of checking along with a checklist of what to check. It is very important to have a knowledge of the pests in your garden, as not all insects and animals in the garden are harmful (many insects and animals actually help in pest control); further, the damange inflicted by some pests can be minimal and not really affect your plants.
The insistence of not using synthetic pesticides and fertilizers is an important part of the growth of an organic garden, and not to be compromized with. It is more of a mind set change that you need to rule out the use of such chemicals. This does not mean that you cannot use pesticides, there are a whole range of pesticides and insect repellants that are based on organic ingredients and which are overall of benefit to the environment (the run-off of pesticides and fertilizers into water systems is now a major environmental and health problem).
Finally, let me round off this summary of organic gardening principles with this definition:

"an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony"

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