Neem Oil Organic Insecticide & Repellent

For those of you who prefer organic pest control products, Neem Oil is a natural product made from the seeds of the neem tree. It has several modes of action against a wide variety of insects, including hibiscus pests aphids, thrips, beetles, and whiteflies. Yet is gentle on plants and does not harm many beneficial insects such as ladybugs. It is both a repellent of harmful insects, and an insect growth regulator that prevents insects from developing into adults that can multiply. Many insects stop feeding immediately upon contact with Neem Oil.

This product can be alternated with other pesticides to prevent resistance from developing to any one pesticide, and is a safe and effective way to control insects. For example, controlling thrips requires that another organic product, Spinosad, be rotated with Orthene so that the thrips do not develop resistance to Spinosad. Although Orthene is highly effective against thrips, it is a wide spectrum chemical pesticide that kills both good and bad insects. (It also has a terrible, lingering odor!) Neem Oil is a naturally derived product that is gentler on the environment and on beneficial insects while still providing effective thrips control. It helps prolong the usefulness of Spinosad, our mainstay product for preventing thrips from damaging flowers and causing flower buds of hibiscus to drop off before opening.

Neem Oil is a concentrate. One bottle will make a little more than 5 gallons of spray after mixing it with water. The spray may damage open hibiscus flowers, but will not hurt the flower buds or the plant if used in early morning or late afternoon. Full directions are on the label attached to the bottle.

As with all our new products, we encourage and appreciate customer feedback on its effectiveness. If you use the products we offer, let us know what you think of them! We test them in our San Diego greenhouse here at HVH, but that doesn’t tell us how these products will work in other climates and environments. Please, don’t hesitate to give us feedback by replying to this email, or by using any of the contact links on our website. We look forward to hearing from you!