How Can I Make Neem Oil More Effective?

Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or just beginning as a plant parent, you must be familiar with the countless benefits of neem oil. However, the way you’re using neem oil might often be too harsh or less potent for your plants. Hence, if you’re constantly lining your Google Search Engine with “How can I make neem oil more effective?,” this blog post is for you. 

Here are the five ways to enhance your neem oil’s effectiveness without harming your plants. By effectiveness, the main focus is on the neem oil’s ability to fight off the sneaky bugs harming your plants.

Be Prepared With Your Ingredients and Treatment Schedule

First and foremost, you should prepare your ingredients and plan your treatment. During the growth season, you’ll have to deal with pests, bugs, and fungi. Hence, staying well-prepared ahead of time can make a massive difference in how well neem oil can work out for your plants.

Therefore, have your ingredients lined up before the bug attacks to ensure that you are well-armed in defense when the time comes. The chemicals discussed below are easily available at grocery stores or special gardening stores. You can note them and ensure they are in your arsenal as you discover how to make neem oil for plants.

Moreover, it would help if you also decided on your plant treatment schedule before you deal with the pest attacks. A detailed plan regarding when and how you will treat your plants can significantly enhance your treatment’s effects.

A medication plan is laid out by your doctor when you are not well, which you follow religiously to recover. Your plants need a similar plan to fight the pest or fungus attack.

Thus, pick up a calendar and mark the days or times you’ll treat your plants with the neem oil solution. You’ll have better chances of bugs running away in no time.

Add Water to Your Neem Oil

The next thing you must do to enhance your neem oil’s effectiveness is to make it diluted. For this purpose, you will require two tablespoons of neem oil per gallon of water. The potency of neem oil as a pesticide and fungicide increases in its diluted version without being harsh for the plants.

While diluted neem oil is highly effective, its strength is time sensitive. In other words, the diluted neem oil solution performs best when used within the first four days. Gradually, the potency decreases, and the solution becomes less effective.

This change in the strength levels is due to neem oil’s chemical breakdown in the presence of water. Therefore, diluted neem oil won’t make much difference after a week. You can always prepare a new solution to treat your plants.

Add an Emulsifying Agent

Through daily life experiments and experiences, you must have learned that oils and water don’t mix properly. How would a diluted neem oil solution work? It won’t until you add an emulsifying agent to the mix.

An emulsifying agent allows oil and water to mix well and deliver the purpose. For plants, the emulsifier could be mild dishwashing or gentle liquid detergent. Using harsh chemicals may scare off the bugs but will leave the plants harmed.

Hence, here is how to make neem oil for plants:

In a sprayer, add your diluted neem oil and mix three teaspoons of liquid soap (per gallon of water.) Shake the solution well to help in the proper mixing of the chemicals. Your neem oil solution is ready to fight the stubborn bugs and fungi harming your plants.

However, if you want to increase the potency of your neem oil solution, you can take one more optional step.

Increase Your Neem Oil Solution’s Potency Through Essential Oils

To increase the potency of your neem oil solution, you can add essential oils. This step isn’t necessary as the additional essential oil cost might exceed your budget. Despite that, the essential oil is a great addition if you want to move forward and strengthen your neem oil solution.

Essential oils possess properties to fight off insects. Per gallon of water, you require two teaspoons of essential oils.

Spray Properly onto Affected Areas

Now that you know how to make neem oil for plants and have it ready in a sprayer, be prepared to attack the bugs. However, if you don’t know when and how to use it, this sneaky weapon will backfire and harm the foliage instead.

The time and areas where you spray the neem oil solution matter greatly. During the daytime, with the sun at its peak, there’s a high chance your neem oil will break down and burn the leaves. Therefore, late afternoon and early evening is the most advisable time for treating the plants with neem oil.

Do you spray the blades of your leaves? Great! And how about the underside? That’s where the sneaky bugs hide from the human eye. Hence, thoroughly spray the foliage without leaving any area untreated.

The neem oil can unarm the bugs by affecting their reproduction abilities, increasing the infestation. In contrast, neem oil also directly kills bugs. Both effects work in your plant’s favor.

To get rid of the fungi, spray the neem oil on the foliage and rub it off using a cloth. The fungi break away from the plant’s surface with this trick.

Final Thoughts

Neem oil is a highly potent natural oil renowned for treating plants and saving them from bug infestations and fungal attacks. However, the answer to “How can I make neem oil more effective?” depends on how you use the neem oil.

If you don’t dilute the oil and add soap, the oil will likely be less effective for your plants. Furthermore, spraying the neem oil during the daytime poses additional threats to the health of your plants as the sun interacts with the neem oil’s chemical composition and burns the plant.

By taking care of these minor yet significant details, you can enhance your neem oil’s effectiveness and have a better chance of saving your plants. All the best!