Hello everyone welcome back to the podcast Kevin here from epic gardening today we're tackling a really common recommendation in

DIY pest control

Etc. And that would be using some kind of dish soap in your mixture, right?

And so the question is, is this actually a safe thing to do?

Generally speaking, you have to go a little bit deeper than just choosing any

random soap and making some sort of mix like if you were to use something like

dawn or joy or palm, those are some really common dish soaps.

The problem is that's not really a soap.

That's more of a detergent, which can include a lot of different things.

Bleach, enzymes, dyes, all sorts of different fragrances, and detergents and soaps are chemically different things.

They are different actual compounds, different substances, right?

So you can't just use that word.

Soaps are cleaning agents, they are made from natural oils and fats.

Detergents are cleaning agents that are made from synthetic chemicals known as

surfactants. So they aren't the same thing. You want to use an insecticidal soap. Insecticidal

soaps are true soaps. They aren't detergents. A soap, just a little quick soap making

lesson is made by mixing together sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide with a fat. You get a sodium salt of a fatty acid.

That's the same ingredient in most soap and chemically they're very different from

detergents although they both clean things.

So insecticidal soap is made using only potassium which is a softer soap than a

sodium and it's just a little bit better to use on your garden because it's not going to do a lot of damage to the foliage of your plants.

When you're taking dish soap, aka a detergent, not a soap, right?

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