I dump buckets of soapy water in my front garden all the time (dish washing soap) to kill earwigs. I also used buckets of soapy water to kill the Japanese Beetles when they arrived earlier in the summer.

None of my plants (hostas, sedums, lillies) have every been affected by it.

Gesila

Gesila -- thank you, thank you. N

I read that you use l tbs murphy oil soap to l gal. water to control spider mites, and it won't hurt your roses or flowers. So I think it would be OK, and might actually be beneficial. I am wondering if this could control slugs? the Bug Getta is expensive, since I have so many hostas.

Gesila, could you, please, tell us a bit more on the method of killing earwigs with soapy water? Do you pour it on the soil surface or on plant leaves? I have so many earwigs, they are feeding on my dahlia flowers, I hate them. The only way to get rid of them that I know is hand picking.

When I lived in Oklahoma, I piped up my washing machine to dump all the wash & rinse water on the front lawn. No ill effects that I ever noticed.

ALL detergents and soaps are considered surfactants, the name for things that break down the surface tension of water. A good example of how they work would be with peat moss, which is hard to wet. Pour water in a bucket of dry peat moss and it just floats to the top. But add a surfactant and watch the peat moss soak up the water.

One obvious benefit is that they help the plants roots utilize fertilizers in the soil. As far as pests are concerned I only guess, but I suspect that they break down the pests natural protective coatings. Without the ability to shed water, they soon drown. I think most insects absorb oxygen through membranes in their exteriors. That is why "insecticidal" soapy sprays are used on many pests and they need to get to the bugs directly. With their surfactant qualities they will get to bugs buried in the dirt.

I welcome someone affirming or correcting me on the bug thing. My itch to learn needs scratching.

Les

Swed_hosta,

We were infested with earwigs last year. At night, our front porch and garage would be covered. They were devouring my lanium and daisies out front. Nothing killed them or made them go away. I read about rolling up wet newspaper at night and then dumping the newspaper in a bucket of soapy water. It took about three days of doing that to get them out of the garage.

For the front porch, at night I took buckets of soapy water and tossed it on the porch. It's almost instant death to those earwigs.

After that, I got brave enough and started tossing buckets of soapy water on my plants at night to kill them. I figured it couldn't be much worse than the earwigs eating them.

When those Japanese Beetles came, I tried killing them with Sevins and some other kinds of insecticides. Nothing I had worked. So, I did the bucket of soapy water trick on them. There were so many swarming in my sedums, it took six buckets.

Les, I don't know the answer to your question, but when I was killing the Japanese beetles with soapy water, there were a few beetles that had made their way to my strawberries. I had a staw and a cup of soapy water with bubbles. I was going to pour the whole cup into the plant, but I used the straw to kind of poke around first. I had some bubbles on the end of the straw and just touching the Japanese Beetle with the soap on the straw caused them to die, almost instantly.

Lesson learned on Japanese Beetles, dump the soapy water as soon as you see them. Japanese Beetles emit a scent that tells other beetles to come join them. It only took one day to eliminate all JB from my garden for the season with the soapy water. I wasted days on the insecticides. It seemed that every day that I left them there, they traveled deeper into the garden.

Gesila

seems like butch/mad dog did this in his more temperate region.. it was his stream where he claimed he floated hosta to their delight ...

anyone have an old link ???

ken

Some guy on PBS TV fund drive was explaining that soapy water not only takes care of insects it also cleans the plants and the soil, a nice combination. I usually add a drop of handsoap into a spray bottle of insecticide or herbicide. The soap there will make the surface of plants and insects accepting the poison better I read, takes off their protective coating.
Bernd

Soapy water on indoor plants or containers is usually warned against as the media can't buffer the soap but outside it is fine as long as it's light on bleach and no borax.

tj