How Coconut Oil Helps in Healthy and Organic Gardening
With general buzz and increasing awareness about organic food, many people want to know about organic food and learn how they can obtain organic food. You have two choices for this, either you can go to the market and buy organic food or you can produce your own organic food. If you choose the first option, you may find that buying organic food is quite expensive. Therefore, you must opt for the second alternative, that is, organic gardening. Not only organic gardening allows you to produce healthy food, but it is also very cost effective. However, in order to do organic gardening you must know everything about it, ranging from the production to the harvesting process. For instance, the organic food production process requires you to use organic ingredients. In simple words, organic gardening does not require chemicalbased pesticides,
fertilizers, GM seeds, or insecticides. Apart from adding organic pesticides and fertilizers, organic gardening involves other important aspects of gardening too, such as maintaining healthy soil, testing the soil quality, adding nutrients, tilling, sowing, controlling diseases and pests, controlling the weeds, etc. All these methods will help you to achieve positive results in your house garden. Coconut Oil Helps in Healthy and Organic Gardening When we are talking about healthy and organic gardening, one of the main components that we should not forget is coconut oil. It is an important ingredient that is very beneficial for organic gardening. Coconut is a versatile fruit. It can be obtained in many forms, like the coconut palm, coconut husk, coconut water, coconut oil, etc. Among these, coconut oil is the one form of coconut that can help you to grow healthy plants in your garden and remove all the weeds from your garden. Besides this, coconut oil has various other uses, including culinary uses, commercial uses, industrial uses, household uses, etc. It all depends on how you want to use coconut oil for your home, kitchen, or garden. Coconut Oil as a Weed Killer You can use coconut oil as a weed killer or better known as an herbicide. It is a green alternative to all those chemical laden, nasty herbicides or weed killers. And, using coconut oil is not so difficult. It is as simple as opening up your pot of coconut oil. Now, you would be wondering that how coconut oil can kill all those weeds in your garden. Then, let me explain you the reason behind it. Coconut oil consists of plenty of fatty acids, also called nonanoic acid or pelargonic acid. These fatty acids impair the ability of a plant to photosynthesize and remove waste through transpiration. Unlike the various systemic herbicides that are immersed into the plant and kill it
from the inside, coconut oil instead layers the outer skin of the intended plant, and thus reacts with the waxy outer membrane of the plant and eventually dissolves it. Through this, the weed is not able to retain its moisture and in due course it withers and dies. The main and active constituent in coconut oil is sodium lauryl sulfate, which is frequently extracted and commercially prepared as coconut oil herbicides and is also used as a surfactant in most of the detergents. How to Prepare Your own Coconut Oil Herbicide Preparing your own coconut oil herbicide is quite easy. Let us look at what goes into making this organic herbicide. For this, you need to: Take equal parts of cheap vegetable oil and coconut oil. Pour these two oils into a saucepan. Place the saucepan over low heat on the stove. Apply heat to the saucepan till it liquefies the oil. Remove the saucepan from the stove. Then, turn off the stove. Whisk the vegetable oil and coconut oil together, till the mixture seems uniform in appearance. Now, pour this mixture into a spray bottle. After cooling, both the oils will separate. Therefore, it is necessary that you shake the bottle vigorously before you spray this solution onto the weeds. Now, spray this coconut oil solution onto the weeds, till all parts of the targeted plant are fully saturated. The normal viscosity of the oil is sufficient to hold it onto the plants and their leaves, without any further assistance. Apply this solution daily for atleast one to two weeks, depending on how tough the weeds are. It is advised that you must apply the solution till the weeds undergo noticeable damage, like wilting.
However, once the weeds wilt, you need to stop applying this solution made from coconut oil. When several days pass after the leaves and stems wilt, pull up the weeds by their base. After this, spritz the hole, where the weeds grew, two or three times with this coconut oil solution. This will help to kill the root fragments of the weeds, in case they are still viable. The holes left by the weeds must be filled with this solution. How easy is that? Apart from this, coconut oil can also be utilized for other uses in your garden. Let us have a look at some of the other uses of coconut oil for healthy and organic gardening. Other Uses of Coconut Oil for Healthy and Organic Gardening Makes Plants Shine Coconut oil is very good for your house plants. If you add coconut oil to the leaves of large plants, then you will see that they will shine. 2. Keeps Grass from Getting Stuck If you often see that your garden grass gets stuck to your lawnmower catcher, then you can use coconut oil to remove this grass from your lawnmower. You can do this by coating the inside part of your lawnmower with coconut oil before you mow your garden. This will prevent many grass blades from sticking to the lawnmower. Moreover, you can also coat the blades of your mower directly, in order to prevent grass cuttings from sticking on them. 3. Clean Your Garden Tools When you are outdoors, try to visit your garden shed. Here, use coconut oil to clean
your tools. Coconut oil helps you to get rid of the rust on your garden tools, keeps them lubricated, prevents them from future rusting, and keeps them in great working order. 4. Improve Your Fertilizer When you fertilize your garden or lawn, you can add coconut oil to the fertilizer. Since, coconut oil acts as a surfactant, it will provide a better coverage to your plants and garden. So, get ready to use coconut oil for a healthy and organic gardening. Source URL : How Coconut Oil Helps in Healthy and Organic Gardening Website : Coconut Recipe Tips, Coconut Oil Benefits, Virgin Coconut Oil