#basic g

Toxin-Free Pest Control - Home Remedy

Do it yourself - Very economical

Equipment needed:

Garden hose

Ortho sprayer

Step 1: Mix your concentrate

1½ parts Basic H² (or 3 parts Basic H Classic)

1 part Basic-Germicide

Steps 2: For Outdoor Use:

Fill Ortho Sprayer (or similar) with concentrate

Set the dial selector at 2 … you will automatically spray a dilute mixture of 2 tablespoons (1 oz.) of concentrate per gallon of water

For Indoor Use:

Fill 16 oz. (500 ml) spray unit with water

Add ¾ teaspoon of concentrate

Where to Use

On lawns for control of fleas, ticks, chiggers, and mosquitoes

On patios & porches for control of flies, spiders & other insects

On houses as a house wash and pest control combined

On dog houses, dog beds, and kennel runs

This mixture is also an effective spray to kill wasps

Kills lice and fleas, and is effective as a fly spray on animals: cattle, horses, dogs, chickens, turkeys, pigs, cats (do not get in the animal’s eyes)

Controls bag worms and other insects in cedar, pine, and nut trees, etc.

Spray as frequently as needed

Most pesticides are guaranteed to work, so why not use them?

The answer is simple … agents toxic to cellular tissue can have devastating effects on the respiratory system, nervous system, and the immune system:

1. Once inside the brain, toxins can alter the ability to concentrate & can lead to nervous system disorders and permanent learning disabilities

2. Toxins overload the immune system & lead to less resistance to colds, flu-like systems, etc.

3. Toxins cause sensitivity of the respiratory system, and lead to proliferation of allergies and asthma

4. Toxins have been linked to liver & kidney damage and many forms of cancer. Recent studies by the National Institute of Health & Safety and the National Cancer Institute, show that leukemia risk increases greatly for children and adults where toxic pesticides are used in the home and garden. A cancer journal reported children under ten, exposed to toxic pesticides in the home or garden at least once a month, have a 7x higher incidence of leukemia.

5. Some toxic pesticides can produce demyelination in nerve bundles and the spinal cord - this can lead to M.S. and paralysis

What are Your Choices?

Are people actually willing to take this risk and contribute to this suffering in order to kill ants, fleas, spiders, moths, and other insects? Certainly, this is sufficient confirmation to persuade every reader of this brochure to never again purchase toxic pesticides.

Basic H² is an all organic, biodegradable wetting agent … actually making water 300 times "wetter" - it reduces water tension and also improves assimilation by chemically enabling water to bond better with anything it touches. It is concentrated and economical. It was developed in cooperation with nature, as are all Shaklee products. When mixed with water, Basic H² delivers an immediate wetting (surfactant) action, penetrating dirt and emulsifying grease and oil. For this reason, it has been used for almost 50 years as a general purpose cleaner.

Basic-Germicide, as its name indicates, is a versatile, non-polluting germicide, which is totally biodegradable and will not hurt the environment.

Does it Work?

Since 90% of insects have an oil coating, Shaklee Basic H², as a wetting agent, penetrates the outer shell and actually suffocates the insects. Insects eggs are softened by the spray, which prevents hatching.

NOTE and disclamer: Officially, Shaklee Corporation markets Basic H² as a Household Cleaner and Basic-Germicide as a Highly Concentrated Germicide. These pest control recommendations are not published or endorsed by Shaklee Corporation, but have been gathered from environmental field experts. A surfactant/germicide combination will accomplish similar results on insects. But can you find a pair which work together and are non-toxic as well as biodegradeable?  

More information about Basic H is available as linked below: 

Basic H® Classic

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.

Size: 30 gallon

Basic-G® Concentrated Germicide

Excellent choice for use in the kitchen, bathroom, or pet area. EPA registered

Size: 32 oz.

Basic H® Classic

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.

How a Farmer Gets By Without Toxic Shop Chemicals

Practically, I don't know how anyone could get by without killing themselves off from fumes. I was in the shop today, and was marvelling again at how much I can get from my 5 gallon bucket of Basic H Classic. Every farmer should have one out there.

First, I wanted to mix up some bug spray to keep the mosquitoes off me. That's an easy one (and a friend recently tested this for me while mowing his lawn - not a single bite):

Half water, half Basic H (put the water in first, or you'll have foam all over the place.

I pick up other people's trash all the time and like to re-use (recycle) it when I can. Occasionally, I find old plastic fifth's tossed out. Those hip flasks. When they are plastic, you can take a pop-top screw-on lid and you can then squeeze a squirt out, rub it on.

The Mechanic's Friend.

I work with oil and grease every day, it seems. So when I get it on my hands, it usually sinks in and is hard to get off. Usually, I have to do a two-step process to get it off, first some sort of cleanser, and then soap and water to get the cleanser off. In both cases, I'm left with something that makes my food smell different when my hand gets near my mouth and nose.I don't need another adventure when I come in for lunch.

Solution is the same bottle and mix. Just put it on before you start to work and rub it in good, let it dry. Then you simply put your hands under running water to get rid of it.

A note here: it only takes a drop in your pet water to act as a de-wormer, so don't wash your hands over something they use to drink out of - they won't use it. Wash it over some patch of lawn you can mow. The grass will soak it up and love it - but I have that problem right now with that spot of grass much taller than everything else as it's gotten the run off from my "experiments" but I can't mow right there. (Have to clip it by hand - or maybe pull out that clump and feed it to the cattle, then replace with gravel and rock. Add it to my "To-Do" list - [sigh].)

Here's another note: if you accidentally leave the pop-top open, it's only going to clean your truck seat and jeans, not dissolve them.

A Natural Degreaser without Fumes.

I use the Cattle Spray formula, which is a bit thinner. 1 part Basic H to 6 parts water. That's thicker than they recommend for just degreasing, but easier to remember. (And I'm still old school with habits like: use a lot to fix something better.)

This one I put in a spray bottle - and mark it so no one else will pick it up. (I've already had that happen.) What's great about this is that it isn't some aerosol, and you don't mind if it gets tipped over or leaks on something. It's not going to take paint or skin or lung tissue out when you use it. So you can use it more often.

The spray bottle is adjustable for a mist or a direct, focused stream about 5-6 ft. away. I went and bought one of these, as the old ones were in use or worn out.

I've even found that it does pretty well on sticky bolts or  hinges as a temporary fix. It's a bit of a lubricant as well. Since it's all natural, it will simply wash off. So it's a great degreaser, since you don't have to be concerned too much about where all that oil is going to as you do rinse it. And I've used it on projects where I didn't want to put the various gaskets at risk by putting a toxic solvent on them.

You should see my tractor oil radiator. Never could get it clean before this, mostly because I didn't trust being able to get those commercial degreasers completely off with just water. This just sprayed on, left it for a bit (did the other side of the tractor) then came back and washed it off with a garden hose. I'll post a picture when I can (camera-phone ran out of juice at the wrong moment.)

That bottle in the middle is a honey jar (empty when I started) as it squeezes out well for bigger messes, and is easy to pick up and hold with a gloved hand.

Which brings up the other use - taking it out with me to put on a cow's head (right around the horns where they like to be scratched, even the polled ones - and that honey-jar size ensures I won't run out easily.

Other Basic H uses

Well, there are a lot. Today, I took that flask (as it was in my pocket - nice size and shape, eh?) and put some on my dog where I know she couldn't lick it. I felt a tick around her ear and she didn't want me to mess with it. This stuff is also great as tick repellant and flea dip/shampoo. As well, the dogs don't mind it, as it doesn't have a perceptible smell to humans.

She's had some fleas at the beginning of winter, but didn't want me picking them off, so I just sprayed a house version of degreaser on it (2 ounces Basic H per gallon of water - divide by 8 to fit into a 16 oz. spray bottle) on her stomach and she seemed to like it. And they didn't bother her again.

For ag uses, I've got a lot more listed on my Worstell Farms site, under Agriculture News & Information. It's good as a soil conditioner, which is what I bought it for (one quart Basic H per 50 gallons water) and some even use it to both pre-treat seeds and also to fatten stock on feed. (But Shaklee doesn't test on animals, so your mileage is your own. But there have been some university studies conducted some years ago with Basic H.)

      More information about Basic H is available as linked below: 

Basic H® Classic 

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.

Size: 30 gallon

Basic-G® Concentrated Germicide

Tackles over 40 microbes, including several animal viruses. Excellent choice for use in the kitchen, bathroom, or pet area. EPA registered

Size: 32 oz.

Basic H® Classic

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.

Getting Rid of Moles and Dandelions

A common problem with lawns is mole tunnels and dandelions.

The Shaklee solution I found was:

Grubs: 1 ½ quart Basic H - ½ pint Basic G - 10-12 - gallons of water. Spray every 100 ft Use Ortho bottle or injector

Dandelions: 100 sq ft - Use Ortho Spryer or hose w/ valve sytem - 2 quarts of Basic H - 1 bottle of Liqui-lea - ½ pint Basic G - Should be used with some form of liquid fertilizer, as determined by soil tests. Apply twice a year

The grubs recipe is because moles are found to go after grubs, which are insect larvae that hatch in the soil. While this can be disputed, in both cases it's due to nutrient deficiencies in the soil.

The average lawn has problems.

Lawns are commonly built with a few inches of topsoil on top of whatever was there before. In many developments, the top soil is scraped off, then the basement dug and the ground leveled around that foundation. Then a few inches of topsoil is spread back over and the lawn seeded.

In many cases, you are dealing with clay or rock under that thin veneer of soil.

To make matters worse, the amount of grass you have above will mirror the roots below. If you like a closely cropped lawn, then you'll have maybe an inch or less of roots below. This is why grass needs regular watering.

The solution to converting clay soils to deep organic matter requires deep-rooted plants and earthworms. Earthworms live on organic matter and move through the soil, digesting as they go. So a deep-rooted plant will dig down and leave organic matter as their roots expand and contract.

There are at least a couple main types of worms. Surface earthworms live within the upper soil, and are described above. Night crawlers and others have more or less permanent burrowing systems which go several meters (3-foot lengths) underground. (http://soils.usda.gov/sqi/concepts/soil_biology/earthworms.html)

Why Liqui-Lea works on dandelions was more of a mystery.

According to several sources (I use "Weeds: Control Without Poisons" by Charles Walters) dandelions occur in acid soils with low calcium. And the suggested solution is to dig your soil up to a depth of six inches and incorporate lime or another source of calcium, then replant your lawn. As well, let your lawn grow taller.  Of course, that isn't in anyone's budget.

When I looked into the Liqui-Lea label, I expected to find calcium. Nope. The closest I found was Vitamin D-3 as cholecalciferol - which doesn't mean contains calcium, but apparently refers more to how it's produced (I'm no chemist, and Wikipedia didn't help.)

But when I chased up what influences calcium intake, it pointed right back to vitamin D-3. While most of the data is on how humans use this, there have been some studies on how this affects plants, such as livestrong.com and homestead.org - the latter pointing out that B-12 (also in Liqui-Lea) was beneficial to plant growth. D-3 is found generally to improve root growth.

The dandelion is noted for it's deep taproot, which is able to bring up nutrients from deep in the soil. Earthworms will use the tunnels created by dying dandelion taproots as well.  So when you use Liqui-lea to spray your lawns, the other plants are able to improve their root structure.

Additional to this, Liqui-Lea contains citric acid, which is known to dissolve calcium carbonate (the most common form of calcium amendment for soils - like egg shells).

But back to our moles.

Now one misconception is that Basic H, being an effective naturally-based and biodegradable surfactant, actually kills earthworms and grubs. However, Shaklee doesn't do testing for agricultural use. The university studies I've followed don't address this. One parallel is that when you use Basic H as fly repellant, reports are that flies and mosquitoes simply stay out to a distance from horse and rider by about 18" to 3 feet. So it's more probable that they simply avoid it and move elsewhere.

Another fascinating aspect about surfactants emerges - is that they actually make water more effective ("wetter") by reducing tension in the molecules, so that it can penetrate further. What this would mean is that it would make minerals (and vitamins) more available for uptake by existing plants.

Organic matter would then go deeper with your lawn roots and so earthworms would tunnel deeper as well as moles.

Now most of the above is some effort to explain the anecdotal results of this spraying. The bottom line is that people have used this recipe above and found it to work. Until we can get several comparative university studies to investigate Shaklee vitamins and green cleaning solutions and their effect on plant growth as well as grub eradication, we are really just guessing as best we can.

Meanwhile, we can enjoy a deep green lawn with no mole tunnels.

More information about Basic H is available as linked below: 

Basic H® Classic

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.

Size: 30 gallon

Basic-G® Concentrated Germicide

Tackles over 40 microbes, including several animal viruses. Excellent choice for use in the kitchen, bathroom, or pet area. EPA registered

Size: 32 oz.

Basic H® Classic

Efficient, powerful, safe, biodegradable, and economical, the world's most versatile cleaner.