The Garden & Household Compendium
There are a lot of nifty tricks out there, so I started collecting them.
These are often hidden behind shitty websites full of ads and a lot of irrelevant text, though, so I figured Iâd keep my own tricks in one place. I will be updating this page whenever I find new things I want to document, so feel free to check back later to see if thereâs anything new. Here goes the first few things I wanted to note down:
Getting rid of ants and other insects
- Cinnamon. You would not believe it at first, but the reason the bark of the cinnamon tree is spicy, is because it has evolved it to be (among other things) a natural insect repellant. Put some on/in the holes ants and termites dig open, put it on your plants, put it around your garden, youâll be surprised how versatile this one is.
- 90% water + 5% ethanol + 5% soft soap / green soap (do NOT use any detergent or household cleaner, soft soap only!!). Mix well, put in a spray bottle, itâll kill all the lice on a plant with just a few treatments. I prefer this slightly less than the cinnamon trick, because soft soap isnât as tasty as cinnamon on edible plants.
Getting rid of weeds
- Boiling water is surprisingly effective, because itâll seep down to the roots and kill the entire plant, making sure it wonât return for a while. Some plants are more hardy against this than others, but enough hot water will kill basically anything.