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Insecticidal Soap Gone Awry

Winter 2022-23

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Broken Trowel logo

Insecticidal Soap Gone Awry

By Karin Beuerlein

Read by Matilda Longbottom

 

Listen Now:
/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/21_Insecticidal-Soap-Gone-Awry.mp3

One morning I went outside to find several of my healthiest plants sheared off at the soil. The culprit? Cutworms.

I decided to try spraying the plants with nontoxic insecticidal soap—I use it sometimes on my flowers—but I was nearly out. So I purchased a refill at the local home store, loaded my sprayer, and carefully misted each plant.

Man Spraying insecticide

The next morning, I hurried outside. What lay there almost stopped my heart. Nearly every plant was curled into a tiny, agonized ball.

I knelt and felt a pepper plant. It was … slimy. I couldn’t figure it out. I knew that insecticidal soap was safe; I’d used it a hundred times on my petunias. How could this have happened?

I scoured the Web for some clue, and as I clicked frantically through a gardening site I noticed that the directions for debugging a particular plant called for a very small amount of “soap concentrate.” Suddenly, what I had done hit me like a ton of fresh compost.

I had not purchased a refill of bug-killing soap. I had purchased—and sprayed—soap concentrate.

In the ashen slime of my dead lettuce lay universal truth and timeless wisdom: Always, always, read the label. ❖

What’s your worst gardening mistake? Email us your 200-300-word summary to submissions@greenprints.com with “Broken Trowel Entry” in the subject line—if we print your item, you win the Broken Trowel Award and get a free one-year subscription and our GreenPrints Companion CD!

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • At The Gate
  • Contributors
  • Stories

  • Stuffed with Christmas Joy
  • The Gardener’s December
  • The Boysenberry Saga
  • Lily Bushes
  • The Upside-Down Flower Tree
  • Mother Hen
  • Winter Is Coming
  • The Sole in My Father’s Garden
  • “The Waiting is the Hardest Part”
  • Rundown Garden, Brand-New Friend
  • Setting Down Roots
  • A Real Gardener
  • My First Orchid
  • For the Birds
  • The Flower Shop
  • Issue 132 Sponsorship Partners
  • Buds

  • Flowers always make people better
  • A garden where one may enter
  • Poems

  • Pine Tree
  • Cuttings

  • Are you a DIGr?
  • To Build or to Plant
  • Life Runs On Sunlight
  • Green Redemption
  • Broken Trowel

  • Insecticidal Soap Gone Awry
  • Letters to GreenPrints

  • Winter 2022-23

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