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ebryan_gw

Anyone use homeopathic garden spray

ebryan
17 years ago

maybe this is a European trend, however in my latest visit to my favorite garden center I found quite a bit of "homeopathic" concentrate that one mixes with water and sprays on plants with a multitude of problems. Supposedly the minute concentrates of various minerals, etc. are helpful for ailing plants.

Must admit to buying and using it on my myriad of problem plants (black spotted roses, strangely yellow daisy, mildewed phlox paniculata, and always problematic box woods). But would be nice to know if this is not just wishful thinking. Thanks!

Comments (13)

  • JAYK
    17 years ago

    Absolutely no evidence that this works. I would use materials supported by actual empirical evidence that they work.

  • sylviatexas1
    17 years ago

    I've had good, bad, & inconclusive results with homeopathic medicine myself, but it always involved detailed interviews & precise choices of remedy.

    I never have tried an all-purpose homeopathic remedy for "general" health myself, & I've never heard of using homeopathy in the garden, but it's an intriguing idea.

    Did you already use it?

    Did you get results?

  • sylviatexas1
    17 years ago

    ...forgot to mention that you might try posting a similar message on the Organic Gardening Forum.

  • eldo1960
    17 years ago

    Since homeopathic "medicine" has been discredited by the scientific and medical community because it is based on a nonsensical theory, it follows that homeopathic garden sprays are a waste of time and money. If you want to know the truth about homeopathy, go to www.quackwatch.com Once you read the theory behind the practice, you don't have to have any scientific training to realize that it is hocus-pocus.

  • mikofarmer
    17 years ago

    There have been several independently run tests showing homoeopathy effects plants. It is used on thousands of hecatres of kiwi fruits in NZ by bog standard farmers - some organic, some biodynamic, but many just wanting to make a better profit. It is used for frost protection and to protect against fruit splitting.

    There is one site that I know which concentrates on homoeopathy and plants (as well as other biodynamic stuff). I like it because its subject is so far off the map but its process seems to be scientific. Check it out - www.considera.org . The homoeopathic part can be found under the preparations + link .

    There you can see work is happening in India, Pakistan, Holland, Switzerland and Germany, UK, New Zealand, Italy, Australia and USA.

    I see that eldo1960 considers it discredited - I think the jury is still out. But it would certainly give the jury something to think about if homoeopathy can be demonstrated upon plants as it would certainly dent the supposition that all effects are placebo..

    Let me know what you think when you have seen that stuff please.

  • brooks43
    17 years ago

    mikofarmer, thanks for the link to considera.

    Homeopathy is VERY effective. Relatively simple principles but often very difficult to use effectively without a great deal of experience and training. For most of us, since it goes so against the grain of the science we grew up with, very difficult to accept unless and until we have seen it in action. Easy to say it must just be placebo when it involves someone you don't know, but when the patient is yourself or a child or a pet and it works well with no side effects where nothing else has ever worked at all, then the idea it is just placebo is clearly nonsense.

    ebryan, it is not clear to me that the spray you mention is homeopathic. Is there a link that explains better what the product is? It isn't just that the substance tends to be very diluted, it must also be energized to work homeopathically.

    I have wondered for sometime what the potential was for using homeopathy or something similar for plants and why it wasn't more widespread. Afterall, there aren't the ethnical considerations of experimenting on animals or people so we could all try it out in our gardens. A homeopathic remedy is chosen based on symptoms. A variation that should work is isopathy - making a "nosode" out of the diseased material and then reapplying it to the plant.

  • mikofarmer
    17 years ago

    There is a recent book relevant to this - 'Homoeopathy For Farm And Garden' by Vaikunthanath Das Kaviraj - ISBN - 978-0-9517890-5-6. I think it may be the first of its kind.

    Here is a link that might be useful: MM Publications

  • sandy0225
    16 years ago

    So can you dilute some japanese beetles 100x and spray it on plants to get rid of them. Or will you just be taking out the ones you put into the blender?
    LOL! I'd be willing to buy a blender to commit beetleacide right now.

  • kaviraj
    15 years ago

    I am the one who wrote the book.
    Do you really think it is placebo?
    If so, you must be very gullible, to believe i am such a great magician i can even fool plants.
    Quackbusters do not know about homoeopathy - they are merely prejudiced to condemn what is beyond their ken.
    I.o.w they are narrow-minded bigots, whose mind cannot imagine beyond what they can see.
    I bet they also do not believe in nanophase materials - beyond the visible and smaller than molecules.
    Avogadro's limit says nothing more than that he did not have the means to detect beyond the molecular level.
    Subatomic particles also exist and are beyond that limit.
    A legal trial in Australia put me in the right - the judge of course was an idiot, whose understanding of small things was just wishful thinking - so the quackbuster would say.
    However, he went by the testimony of the people who used it with great satisfaction about the effects - they were also gullible fools?
    How about their plants that got better and stayed better?
    Foolish, gullibke plants, of course.
    And i am the great magician - get real!

  • petzold6596
    15 years ago

    First and foremost, plants do not, I repeat, do not readily absorb minerals through their leaves. The only one I'm aware of is iron and only in a specific form and only minimally.

    Think about it, most leaves have a waxy cuticle protecting their innards. Beetles and some bugs have rasping mouth parts so they can get through the cuticle so they can feed. So how can an inert chemical will through the cuticle?

  • gatormomx2
    15 years ago

    Plants cannot read either .
    The mind is a powerful healer .
    Wishful thinking and over looking coincidence goes a LONG way !
    Interesting thread .
    Thanks !

  • brendan_of_bonsai
    15 years ago

    Homeopathy does not work with out the placebo effect. If you take a vial of homeopathic remedy at a high dilution (4C-5C depending on substance, keeping in mind that dilutions up to 1200C can be found) no one can tell it apart from a vial of water from the same source as the water for the remedy. No electron microscopy or NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) or HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) shows the slightest "memory" There is no detectable difference at all. That does not mean that there cannot be a difference, and so we can take a vial of water and a vial of "homeopathic medicine" and give them both to a homeopath and say tell us which one is which and they can test them on patients and they can't figure it out more than half the time either.

  • Donna Gegger
    last year

    I'll be using remedies on my plants in the spring. Absolutely it works. Conventional medicine never worked to cure my arthritis or my myriad of other issues. So, I turned to homeopathy, and lo and behold, it works when you work with a qualified homeopath who really knows what they are doing. It's hard to believe. It's unfortunate people thinks it's quackery from googling. Their loss. I can walk again pain free amongst other things. And, those beetles and slugs will be driven from my plants in the spring.


    Here is a good website for you: https://ecogrape.com/homeopathy-for-plants-part-2/