Dalmatian chrysanthemum/pyrethrum - homegrown pesticide

[Chuck Jägerschnitzel]

I've been growing these for a few years. Anyone else have this habit? Easy to grow & highly productive in pyrethrins. I extract the dried blossoms in Everclear & dilute that in water to spray on aphids, which I get occasionally on outdoor plants. Seems to do the trick pretty good.

 

[Creeperpark]

Yes, pyrethrins work so well and are safe to use on veggies. I bet the homemade stuff is much better than at the garden shop. Do you evaporate the Everclear out completely? Is your mixture oil or liquid you mix with water?

 

[Chuck Jägerschnitzel]

I just mix the extract in with the water. Its not an exact science, but did a little bit of reading here and there and came to the conclusion that the unadulterated extract should be crazy strong as far as the pyrethrin content goes, so the dilution into the water ends up having fairly low alcohol content. I've sprayed with vodka strength alcohol-water mixes before without doing too much harm, so I never thought to worry too much about lower strength, the alcohol evaporates away pretty quickly anyway. Making the homegrown pyrethrin spray is a really simple trick. I hadn't ever even considered evaporating off the alcohol until you mentioned it, but I guess I could get some sort of super purified pyrethrins that way, but hash oil strength stuff seems unnecessary, seems like even 0.1% pyrethrin in the final spray is probably overkill

 

[Chuck Jägerschnitzel]

My pyrethrums are now blossoming, the previous pic was something I found on the web. I still have about 2oz of dried flower in my freezer, left over from last year so I don't even really know why I'm still growing them. That 2oz is probably enough to spray an acre and my grow spot is only 220 square feet. Maybe I'll harvest these flower and and then plant some marijuana in the pyrethrums' container instead.