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 probably were not able to use the same techniques on their crops.

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

These days, rather than repel, we would rather to kill. Not only that though, chemicals that are derived from plants are often synthesized, because there is more demand for the pesticide than there are plants. Chemical insecticides are more concentrated as well. So, now we have the question, is natural insecticide all that natural?

This question is quite troublesome to those who worry about polluting the planet with too many chemicals. In fact, there is a mounting number of people who are troubled about these issues and there has been since the hippy days of the Seventies and even before. Environmentalists worry about the effect mankind is having on our environment by the over use of chemicals, particularly, but not only, insecticides.

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

Look on the box, if there is a word you cannot read or do not understand or is over ten letters long, it is probably a chemical. Which is not to say that it cannot be eco-friendly, but just to remind you that it is not entirely 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 spurn man-made copies completely. For example, 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, synthesized citronella mosquito repellent 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 principles and so the choice is yours. Luckily, we have a fabulous resource for study at our finger tips, namely the Internet. If you have values and you are free-thinking, check out the ingredients of that ‘all natural cockroach killer’ on the Internet, before you part with your money, because there positively 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 produce so much profit.

Owen Jones, the author of this article writes on quite a few topics, but is at present involved with Terro Ant Bait. If you would like to know more or check out some great offers, please go to our website at Killing Carpenter Ants.