Developing Organic Weed and Pest Control
An Ecuadorian worker is hand spraying one of the basil fields with Gary’s special essential oil mixture to kill white flies.
All our fields are sprayed with a natural herbicide made of essential oils, neem oil, and castile soap. We, unfortunately, live where we have neighbors and where the wind blows; and all of the fields, ditches, and roadsides around the farms grow weeds and spread seeds. There is no way we will ever be successful in controlling all weeds. They’re part of nature.
So when you go down to the farm and you see pristine fields, it’s because 17 or 21 field hands were in those fields hoeing the weeds. The fields that you will see weeds in are the fields that the field hands haven’t gotten to yet to hoe those weeds. So when you see a weed, don’t say, “Oh, my goodness, I thought this was an organic farm where they control the weeds.” Hey, if we controlled every single weed, your lavender would cost you a thousand dollars a bottle, okay? We have to be real about it.
Commercial sprays are not used on Young Living essential oil crops, period, irrespective of what other people out there may say. And I find it really interesting—how do they know? They’ve probably never set foot on a farm!
In this photo, we’re hand spraying the essential oil spray. Yes, I said hand spraying. Why? Because this is Ecuador. We can afford to do hand spraying for spot areas. This happened to be one of our basil fields. Here they’re fumigating again. This was a mixture of Basil, Palo Santo, and Tansy because of the white flies. We have different pests in Ecuador than we have in Idaho or France or even Oman.
