Using Neem Oil Soap - Contact Insecticide
Neem oil soap is used as a contact insecticide when you have pest insects already inhabiting your plants and causing sufficient damage to demand some kind of attention. Neem oil soap will kill most insects it contacts directly. That means when you spray, you need to be sure you hit the tops and the bottoms of leaves and work especially to get the material into the interior of the plant. Always mix the neem oil soap with water at exactly the label’s instructions. Pesticides are not the kind of product where “a little bit more can’t hurt”.
If you do a good job the first time, that should be enough to reduce the population to a level where damage is no longer an issue. Remember, a few aphids on a plant are good. They are food for those beneficial insects. It is when the number of aphids exceeds the ability of the beneficials to control that requires an insecticide such as neem oil soap.
If after 3 to 5 days you still feel the number of pest insects is too high, you can make a second spraying of the plant, again trying to be very thorough. That should do the job. Remember that neem oil soap is also a repellent so any pest critters sneaking in after you have made your spray are probably not going to hang around.
Go to Yardener's Tool Shed for info about the products Neem Contact Insecticide
