Organic Insect Control
Orange Oil / D-LimoneneOne of the most ieresting specific products that I talk about that has a considerable nge oil can be used in gardening and pest control in severaays.
One of the fire ant products that is currently on the market and has EPA registration for fire ant control is Safer’s Fire Ant Control. It used to be called Citrex so you may have heard me talk about it in the past. It is an orange oil or d-limonene product that has very detailed research both from Texas A&M in the field and the University of Texas at Austin in the lab. The product is currently owned by the Woodstream Company and is sold under the name Safer Fire Ant Control Give it a try. It works very well. Another orange oil product with the research behind it needed for its EPA approval is Orange Guard. It is registered for the control of many household insect pests. There are of course many other uses for orange oil and its extract called d-limonene. Just a few of the products include air fresheners, cleaners and soil detox products. Why use toxic chemicals when non-toxic food products work just as well.
Texas A&M Organic Fire Ant Control factsheet
Diatomaceous Earth
Diatomaceous earth is a product that has been used for at least 50 years to control insects in dry environments, fed to animals to rid internal parasites and serve as a natural trace mineral amendment to pet and livestock food. It also works as an internal detox material for animals.
The research on diatomaceous earth we currently have goes back many years. One particular research project very carefully proved that diatomaceous earth does not hurt earthworms in the soil. The apparent reason for the research was to try to come up with a negative – to show that DE would hurt the life in the soil. It didn’t prove one so the research was for the most part shelved and ignored. The second research I’ve discovered covers whether DE has any detrimental effects on animals being fed natural diatomaceous earth at 2% on their rations. The last one we have about feeding natural diatomaceous earth to goats and their kids at Prairie View A&M College. The abstract of these trials, which is on our website www.dirtdoctor.com, proved that not only did it not hurt animals but it functioned as well as or better than the chemical wormers also used in the trials. For some reason doing the final report of this study was never done but the abstract does exist. The reason little was ever done with results of this test is that those funding the research, the chemical companies, didn’t like the results.