DIY Insecticidal Soap to Kill Whiteflies, Spider Mites, and Gnats on Your Marijuana Plants

diy soap for marijuana plants

When it comes to growing cannabis, you’ll inevitably run into the problem of pests. And I’m not talking about scavenger smokers, I’m talking about aphids or whiteflies or even spider mites.

Left unattended, these pests can obliterate a crop. One of the worst feelings for any cannabis grower is seeing his or her buds covered with the nasty critters, eating, peeing and pooping all over their hard work.

The problem is – when you’re in the flowering phase, the use of pesticides should not happen, lest you want to be smoking toxic chemicals – which I imagine you don’t want to do.

If you were about to crop out – you could easily use the “freezem method” where you cut the plant and put it into the freezer for a day or two.

This will freeze the insects and do some minor damage to the Trichomes, but it will for the most part save your crops. The problem comes when you have an infestation a month or so before you have to crop out.

Then you have to be smart.

Today we’re going to talk about making your own “non-toxic” insecticidal soap that can help you get rid of those nasty little pests that ruin crops – not the fuzz – pests!

Before it gets out of hand!

The very first thing you need to do is inspect your plants daily. I’m not talking about watering them or quickly taking care of them. Rather, go to your plants and observe them closely. Check out the leaf, the stem, the bud – move about to random spots all over the plant.

Flip the leaf, check underneath – be diligent. At the sign of any bug – SEND IT TO HELL! Of course, if it’s a beneficial predator, you’ll want to keep it but this is only true in an outdoor grow. For indoor grows – you should have no insects if you have maintained a clean growing environment.

Anyhow – the moment you spot some pest trying to make your bud its home – “KILL, KILL, KILL!”

They are getting out of hand!

Since I grow outdoors, the odds of pests coming into my garden increases. I have seen aphids, spider mites and whiteflies trying to invade my garden. For the most part, I keep them at bay simply because every morning I go on a “ritual killing of straggling bugs” – but I don’t just grow cannabis in my garden.

I grow chilies, carrots, sweet potato, milkweed and much more. Unfortunately, I was simply observing my cannabis plants and ignored the other plants and before I knew it – I had spider mites in the carrots and oleander aphids on the milkweed.

Here’s the dilemma – I can’t put insecticide on the milkweed because Milkweed helps attract beneficial predators. I can’t even use the insecticidal soap I’m going to show you how to make. For the milkweed – manual murdering of pests is the only way.

For the carrots and the rest – Insecticidal soap is the best non-toxic solution.

Let’s make some insecticidal soap

To make some insecticidal soap, you don’t need much. In fact, odds are that you already have most of the ingredients at home.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Dawn or any dishwashing soap is “mild” meaning it doesn’t have ammonia or too many perfumes 2 ½ Tablespoon

1 Gallon Jug of Water

Vegetable Oil 2 ½ tablespoon

Spray bottle

You can use either distilled or tap water to fill the gallon of water. In the gallon, you’ll want to add 2 ½ tablespoons of dishwashing soap and 2 ½ tablespoon of whatever vegetable oil you’d like – even the cheapest kinds will work.

Once you have combined everything, you’ll want to mix up the ingredients. Simply close the jug and start shaking. Immediately after shaking, pour the solution into your spray bottle.

You’ll want to shake the spray bottle before each application.

That’s it!

Don’t kill your plants!

Some novice growers would now go ahead and spray their entire crops with this solution. THIS IS A BAD IDEA!

You’ll want to test the solution on a specific section first – wait a few hours to a day – and if the plant doesn’t respond negatively, you can go ahead and do it for the rest of the plants. A negative response would be brown spotting or wilting. If this is the case, then the insecticidal approach will probably not work – unless you dilute the solution a bit more.

In order to get all of the nasty little pests, you’ll want to gently mist the plants. These insects typically hide under the leaf, so be sure to go and mist under every leaf, bud, etc.

The good thing is that this solution is non-toxic, meaning that even though you’d be killing the pests – you’d still be able to smoke your weed.

Hopefully this is the answer you have been looking for in dealing with your pest issues.

Good luck fellow grower!