Safers soap, and nicotine concentrations

Nexus User elliott (elliott@nexus.edu.au)
Tue, 13 Aug 1996 18:22:41 +0930


>Tobacco-Tea stock solution:
>- 5 cigarettes, filters removed, coarsely broken up - ca. 100 ml
>rainwater (or distilled water)
>- ca. 20 ml alcohol (isopropyl from the pharmacy, prob. 50-70%
>solution; final alcohol content ca. 10%; ethanol or methanol would
>prob. work ok too).
>- combine and let soak for several days (or indefinitely) to extract
>nicotine & ??? from cigarettes. I keep the tea (cigarettes & all) in
>small plastic jar. Not sure how long potency will keep, but I'd guess
>months.
>- optional: add crushed garlic (this might rot eventually), or couple
>drops of citronella or eucalyptus oil.
>
>Application:
>To control MB on a small Sarracenia, I placed plant in bucket w/ ca.
>2-L rain water (enough to cover most of the pot and plant) and added
>10-20 ml of the tobacco tea. I left the plant submerged in this for
>about 3 days, and upon removal, there was no sign of MB. Simply
>submerging the plant in rainwater (no tobacco tea) had no affect on
>MB, so I'm pretty sure the tea did the trick. I also use this as a
>spray (10 ml tea to 500 ml rainwater) and it seems to control aphids
>on Drosera and Sarracenia. I rinse the CPs a few hr after
>application, but not sure whether that's necessary.
>
>Submerging CP in rainwater for 2-3 days also gets rid of aphids.
>
>Ted DeWitt
>Port Townsend, WA USA
>

Ted, (and others)

Thanks for the tips, but one question about the cigarettes. How many
mg of nicotine did they contain? Does it really matter? If I use say,
ultra light 2mg will this work as well as normal ones? (I don't smoke,
so I'll have to get some off a freind!)

Thanks,

Russell Elliott