"Dave Lockwood" wrote in message
news:Nt6Ba.774782$Zo.160838@sccrnsc03...
Hello one and all,
Just a quick question. Does anyone have the correct concentration for
Neem Oil spray? I'd like to use it as a routine, once a month,
preventative.

I can't tell you concentrations, since I don't use neem oil. However, I can
tell you that in pest control, it is a bad idea to routinely apply a
pesticide as a preventative. If you do so, you run the risk of building
immunity to it. Routine application of pesticides and antibiotics as
preventative measures has been commonplace, so you're not alone. But this
practice is why there are so many strains of disease organisms that are
immune to our antibiotics and why so many insect pests are immune to our
pesticides.

By far the better strategy is to be knowledgeable about the optimal growing
conditions for your plants, so that your plants are as healthy as they can
be (and thus less vulnerable), and monitor for signs of a disease or pest,
treating for the pests only when there is a significant threat. You may
want to do some research into integrated pest management. IPM is a well
established environmental management practice focussed on environmentally
friendly pest management; the downside is that to be effective it requires
substantive, comprehensive ecological expertise. You will certainly find
lots of relevant reading material at your nearest university's library. The
more knowledge you have about the ecophysiology and population biology of
each pest organism, as well as the ecophysiology of the plants you're
growing, the more effective your pest management practices will be and the
less you will need to use a pesticide.

Maybe I am just lucky, but I have never had a houseplant, including mostly
orchids, attacked by a pest, and in the garden, the only significant pest
has been a squirrel who developed a taste for iris tubers last winter and
has been trying to eat my bletilla and cypripedium orchids this spring (for
the most part, I have been on site to catch it in the act of digging them up
and chase it off before significant damage was done): curiously, it seems to
have ignored the crocus, hyacynth, lilies, onions and phlox. Because I have
never had a houseplant attacked by a disease or pest organism, I have never
had a need to use a pesticide.

HTH

Ted