Do you have some vinegar in your kitchen that you have left to stay without putting to good use? Do you also have aphids on your houseplants running freely and feeding on your plant sap on end?
Do you feel helpless about these aphids and could really use a remedy that can get these aphid pests and diseases off your house plants without causing damage to the fragile health of your house plants?
Then, you have no problems at all. You have all you need to handle your pest problem in a simple bottle of vinegar.
Vinegar is virtually the only element you would be needing to cut down the aphid population in your plants as well as get rid of pests and diseases.
A good vinegar solution applied correctly, can keep your houseplants free from every form of pests and diseases for a long time.
You can easily purchase domestic vinegar from the nearest grocery shop around you, make a vinegar solution and sprinkle it on your houseplants.
The usage of vinegar for aphid control is advantageous in its ability to be cheap, easy to make, and easy to apply.
Vinegar solution has no reactions whatsoever on the leaves of plants and cannot like pests and diseases lead to the wilting of your plant leaves.
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In this article, I will be showing you how to use natural vinegar spray for aphids and virtually every other form of pests and disease that attack houseplants.
In this article, you will also learn how to make a simple vinegar solution from the comfort of your home that is effective enough to rid your houseplants of aphids.
How Do You Spray Aphids With Vinegar
To apply vinegar to plants, the first thing to take into consideration is the acetic acid concentration of the vinegar.
If the vinegar solution is high in acetic acid, there is a higher tendency of destroying the pests and diseases they were made for and going further to destroy the plant leaves as well as other important soil microorganisms.
The peculiarity with vinegar is that the more concentrated the vinegar solution is, the faster it kills the aphids.
Gardeners who know this, are sometimes tempted to not properly dilute the vinegar concentration because they expect their plants to be quickly rid of aphids.
This practice is disadvantageous in that it could kill the plants as much as it kills the aphids.
I advise a dilute vinegar solution to be sprayed on a plant with the aphids pests and diseases, continuously until all the aphids are gone, instead of a concentrated solution that gets rid of the pests and diseases at the first spray and puts plants at risk.
You would be needing the following to make a vinegar solution that can be sprayed on plants:
1. One litre of water
2. Three hundred (300) milliliters (ml) of vinegar.
3. One tablespoonful of soap
4. A spray can
Procedures
Pour the water into a bowl or container, then add in your three hundred milliliters of vinegar concentrate.
Let it incorporate properly with the water before adding the soap. The essence of the soap is to serve as a binding element between water and the vinegar concentrate.
Stir this solution properly to ensure they have fully blended into each other. Turn this solution into the spray can and sprinkle it on the leaves of the plant.
While you spray, pay greater attention to the underparts of affected leaves. This is because aphids love to stick to the underparts of leaves as a survival technique for escaping the action of pesticides and normal water splashes.
Spray the vinegar solution on the entire plant, as well as all the other plants in the garden.
This is to ensure that dispersed aphid eggs that have not yet hatched on the plants, can be gotten rid of before they mature and constitute a new phase of pests and diseases.
After spraying, give the plants some time, about three days to see how well they have responded to the first spray. Increase the frequency of spray if the aphid population has not reduced.
Eliminating aphids from the plants could take about one to two weeks. Within this period, all you need to do is to patiently apply the vinegar solution to the plant.
Ensure you do not overwater the plant using the vinegar solution, as you do not want to put your plant through the risk of root rot.
How Do You Save Plants After Using Vinegar?
The use of vinegar on plants to treat pests and diseases occurs because plants used to suffer from pests and diseases.
A pest like an aphid that sucks nutrients off the plants, must have done a considerable amount of damage to the plants before they are eventually gotten rid of.
Therefore, certain conditions have to be put in place by a gardener to save the houseplant after the use of vinegar against pests and diseases.
The following are ways to save plants after using vinegar:
1. Adequate watering
2. Exposure to enough indirect sunlight
3. Application of fertilizer
These ways are necessary gardening practices that have to be put in place after using vinegar on plants to get rid of aphids.
1. Adequate Watering
Vinegar application on plants contains acetic acid and can lead to stress on the plant tissue due to its acidic properties. Once the aphids are gone, begin a watering routine on the plants.
Water frequently and adequately. If you can, ensure that soaking as a watering technique is adopted. This helps free the acetic acid that must have coagulated on the plant.
2. Exposure to Enough Indirect Sunlight
Your plant needs enough sunlight to carry out photosynthesis which is essential for growth. This is much more needed after the plant just survived an aphid attack.
This is because the plant has lost a lot of nutrients that need to be regained by photosynthesis.
Also, a frosty environment can inhibit the plant’s ability to recover properly, which might eventually lead to its death.
3. Application of Fertilizer
Acetic acid, used in vinegar and useful for ridding the plants of aphids, contains acid that goes down to the soil to distort the pH balance.
Applying fertilizer to the soil after treating with a vinegar solution, helps to return the soil back to its alkaline state which can help foster growth and recovery.
Can I Spray my Plants with Vinegar and Water to Get Rid of Bugs?
Yes, you can. If you’re still contemplating how effective vinegar would be on bugs, this is your cue to get your vinegar and begin spraying on your plant affected by bugs.
Acetic acids are not only harmful to aphids, they also harm bugs as well as humans in various ratios.
When the vinegar gets on the skin of bugs, it burns up their first skin and wings, keeping them unable to carry out important activities that help them live.
They soon die out and leave the plant.
Does Vinegar Get Rid of Aphids?
Of course, it does. Vinegar is a natural way of getting rid of aphids on plants without harming the plant leaves.
As a remedy for aphids, vinegar is surprisingly used for a variety of purposes and is found in pretty much every home available.
The normal culinary vinegar contains about five percent acetic acid, which is usually too harsh for plants.
Hence they have to be diluted in sufficient water before application to the plant with aphid pests and diseases.
Alternative Natural Control of Aphids
Asides from the use of vinegar on aphids, there are other natural ways of getting rid of aphids on houseplants.
One of them is the use of hands to scrape aphids off the leaves of plants. Since aphids are wingless and move slowly they cannot crawl back to the plants before the sun rises to scorch them out.
The next method is the use of splashing. This involves the use of a hose or sprinkler to splash water on the leaves of plants bearing aphid pests and diseases. This dislodges the aphids from the plants.
The last natural alternative method to remove aphids from plants instead of vinegar is by the spray of Neem oil. Neem oil is known for its effectiveness in the removal of multiple pests and diseases from plants and does this while providing nourishment to the plants.
Precautions on the Use of Vinegar
In Canada, the distribution of vinegar with high acetic acid concentration is termed illegal and criminal. Only industries are allowed to have these amounts of acetic acid.
This is because aside from being an additive to edible food, vinegar can cause a lot of damage to plants, animals as well as humans when wrongly used in high concentrations.
The following are safety measures to take in the use of vinegar, especially as a measure against pests and diseases like aphids.
- Cover your hands and nose with good clothing while mixing and spraying vinegar
- Keep vinegar out of the reach of children
- Dilute vinegar appropriately before application on plants against aphids
- Spray the vinegar solution on a small part of the plant and watch how it reacts to the vinegar solution, before spraying on every part of the plant.
Conclusion
Natural vinegar spray is a better option than pesticides and other more harmful methods of getting rid of pests and diseases from plants.
Vinegar triumphs over other methods due to its generally harmless nature to plants, its mold smell and its ready availability. With the right solution mixture, there are not any species of pests and diseases that can escape the power in your mild yet effective natural vinegar spray.
Owning vinegar is therefore equal to having the right tool for controlling pests and diseases, especially aphids.
