What is Diatomaceous Earth & How to use Diatomaceous Earth in your Garden

In today's video we look at a very effective method of pest control which is diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous Earth can easily be used in your home garden to control a wide variety of pests like:

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Arthropods
Aphids
Corn Earworm
Mealybugs
Spider Mites
Tomato / Tobacco Hornworm
Whiteflies

Gastropods
Snails
Slugs

A broad spectrum organic insecticide which is so safe, you can eat it. Let's study Diatomaceous earth and its benefits in gardening.

So what is Diatomaceous earth? Diatomaceous earth or in short, DE is a very fine powder which is made up by crushed freshwater diatoms. While there are different variants of diatomaceous earth used for various purposes, you want to make sure that for gardening purposes, you want the Food Grade Diatomaceous earth.

Here is a commonly available food grade diatomaceous earth variety. You want to buy a product which also comes with an applicator and we'll soon see how to apply this product

Although it looks like a fine powder, Under the microscope, diatomaceous earth looks like many barbs or shards. This is what makes diatomaceous earth very effective. Diatomaceous earth works very effectively on two classifications of organisms

Ok now let's look at how to apply diatomaceous earth. Its highly recommended that you wear a mask during application. Although diatomaceous earth is safe to humans, it does irritate the nasal passages. And yes you shouldn't be breathing in any form of dust anyways. So wear a mask! We will be using this applicator which makes easy work of spreading the diatomaceous earth on the plants.
Fill up the applicator container and you're ready to roll.

By using the nozzle pointing up, you can get a fine cloud of diatomaceous earth on your plants. Pay attention to the wind direction. You can see here the wind is blowing away from us so we start spraying the other way where the wind is blowing away from us.

In our vegetable garden, we use diatomaceous earth to control aphids and spider mites very effectively. Use it every week or so when you see pests

Now by turning the applicator upside down, you get a larger amount of powder. Dust the plants thoroughly. We use it on our container plants, you can see we are applying this on our okra plants. This is great for plants like okra and eggplants where you want adequate coverage to control aphids as an example.

The way diatomaceous earth controls arthropods is it removes lipids or fats from their exoskeleton and the arthropod eventually sheds it, causing it to dry out and die or become easy prey to its predators like birds, etc.

Does it work on ants? Well technically yes but there are better methods to control ants. And ants usually don't cause any damage to plants except that they protect aphids but generally not too much of a problem

If you have a lot of rain or a lot of water on your plants, diatomaceous earth will not be very effective. You need a dry environment for diatomaceous earth to be effective. And yes technically you can mix diatomaceous earth in water and spray but it will only be effective when the water dries out.

Diatomaceous earth takes about 36 to 48 hours to take action. You want the insects to crawl on it for it to be effective. You can rinse the excess powder off the plants for getting your garden aesthetics back.

Now you may be asking does diatomaceous earth affect beneficial insects like bees and ladybugs? Yes it does but to some extent. Apply the product early morning or late night when bees are less active, they will try to avoid the dust later. That's the best you can do. You are not intentionally harming them

That's all you really know about this wonderful product called diatomaceous earth. So do you use diatomaceous earth in your garden? Do let us know in the comments. Make sure to like and share this video with your friends. Its a great educational session which no one should miss.

Happy Gardening!