Home made inspect spray for the garden

Back in October 2011 I promised that I would put this recipe on my blog when I found it. This is a really handy recipe as not only does it help to keep unwanted pest insects out of the garden, but it you can adapt the recipe to use up kitchen scraps.

Ingredients: 4 large chopped onions, 6 chopped garlic cloves, 1tbsp hot chilli powder, 2 cups pure soap flakes or pure grated soap.

Method: Combine onions, garlic and chilli powder, cover with water and stand for 24 hours. Strain. Mix in soap flakes or grated soap into onion mixture. Dilute mixture 2 parts mixture to 5 parts water. Will keep for 2 weeks in a cool, dark place.

As an alternative to using perfectly good onions and garlic cloves, I often use the off cuts from food preparation. I use the equivalent of the above measurements in onion skins and garlic skins and any bits that are cut off (such as the tip of the garlic or bits of onion that have gone soft).

You will need to give the mixture a good shake before you use it each time as the soap flakes tend to settle a bit. You could use chopped chillis if you have them rather than chilli powder.

Cook dinner, make stock and an insect repellant garden spray all at the same time

Last night I made celery and asparagus risotto with steamed carrots and corn cobbs for dinner. Instead of throwing the food scraps straight into the compost bin, I decided to put them to some use. While the risotto was cooking, I put the onion and garlic skins and off cuts into a plastic bucket to be used in my insect repellant spray. I put the carrot peelings and off cuts, aspargus and celery offcuts (including the leaves from the celery) into a pot of boiling water. To that I added some bay leaves and black peppercorns. That boiled away while dinner was cooking. At the end, leave the stock to cool then place into a container and pop it in the fridge or into the freezer for later use. Then I put the scraps into my compost bin by the kitchen sink, to be put in the compost bin in the garden when it is full.
To make the insect repellant garden spray, boil any left over onion scraps, garlic and chilli. I do have a proper recipe for this somewhere and will add it to the blog when I find it. Basically boil it until everything is well and truly tender, I would probably do it for an hour. Then leave it to steep for a day or two. Mix hot water in with some laundry soap flakes until the flakes have dissolved. Strain the onion mixture and add the liquid to the soap mixture and allow to cool before applying to plants. I then add the solids from the onion mixture to my compost bin.
So basically, out of one lot of ingredients, I made three things. And the good thing was, the only items to go into the bin were a bit of wax off the Romano cheese and some plastic wrap that the corn came in (I now endeavour to buy corn cobbs from the Adelaide Central Markets where they aren't wrapped in plastic like my local green grocer's). And yes, the vegie scraps did eventually make it into the compost bin, but only after I had some use out of them!