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People have been using natural insecticides for thousands of years. In the beginning, they used these ways to keep their residences free of insects, but perhaps were not able to use the same methods on their crops.

For instance, a large number of flies do not like basil or mint, so if you hang that up in your entrance, you will cut down the number of flies in your home, but doing that in a field is more problematic. The ancients never found a way of dealing with locusts.

Nowadays, rather than repel, we would rather to kill. Not only that though, chemicals that are derivatives of plant life are frequently man-made, because there is more demand for the insecticide than there are plants. Chemical pesticides are more concentrated as well. So, now we have the question, is natural insecticide all that natural?

This question is quite vexing to those who are concerned about polluting the planet with too many chemicals. In fact, there is a growing number of people who worry about these issues and there has been since the hippy days of the Seventies and even before. Environmentalists are anxious about the effect mankind is having on our surroundings by the over use of chemicals, especially, but not only, pesticides.

This is why natural pesticides have seen a resurrection and why so many insecticide manufacturers love to add the words ‘natural’, ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘eco friendly’ to their products’ containers. In fact, many are just climbing onto the eco friendly band wagon.

Look on the label, if there is a word you cannot read or do not understand or is over ten letters long, it is almost certainly a chemical. Which is not to say that it cannot be eco-friendly, but just to remind you that it is not completely as natural as it may say on the box.

In fact, there are two camps. There are the naturalists who acknowledge that some natural products that are in massive demand, have to be man-made because there is not enough natural product and there are the purists who shun man-made copies totally. For instance, the latter group would not buy anything that comes in a pressurized can, but they would consider using a mixture of ingredients in a plastic plunger-type spray.

There is a very fine line indeed between say, man-made citronella mosquito deterrent and citronella essential oil that you have extracted from the citronella plant and mixed with alcohol or water and put into your own plunger-type spray. They are basically the same thing, but not quite are they?

At the end of the day, you are the one with your ethics and so the decision is yours. Fortunately, we have a fabulous resource for research at our finger tips, namely the Internet. If you have values and you are independent, check out the ingredients of that ‘all natural cockroach killer’ on the Internet, before you part with your money, because there definitely are environmentally friendly solutions available and they can be found in the shops, but they are normally on the bottom shelf because they do not generate so much profit.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with Terro Ant Bait. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our web site at Killing Carpenter Ants.