Insecticidal Soap is OK!

Got a pest problem? No worries! There's all kinds of recipes on the internet for how to solve it using dish soap... but which recipe is the right one - and why are they all so different?

It never seems to amaze me how reluctant gardeners are to actually use insecticidal soap. Often, when I scroll through Facebook garden groups and see where someone has asked a question about how to deal with pests like aphids, the majority of the suggestions tend to be on the side of using something homemade that involves dish soap. Sometimes it seems as though all gardeners have chosen to agree that anything that can be called a “chemical pesticide” is categorically bad; while anything that kills pests that is made from household cleaning agents or cooking ingredients is categorically good. Of course, none of this makes any sense to me, because it’s all chemicals!

There are few things less welcome in a garden than aphids. Thankfully, they are easily sorted out with insecticidal soap [source].

I can understand why some gardeners don’t want to use some chemical pesticides due to their potential level of toxicity, the extent to which they might not break down and persist in the environment, and whether they might harm other living things. This makes sense, and there is a long list of things that I would not use for these same reasons - but when I come across something that does not have any of these properties, and it has been specially made to solve a pest problem that I have - I check it out. As far as I can tell, insecticidal soap is totally fine to use - even in an “organic” garden¹.

What is it?

Insecticidal soap is called insecticidal soap because it is soap.