Plant Therapy DIY home recipe

[mudballs]

so i've been really tinkering with foliar sprays this whole summer. I like Green Dope Project from J Bleezy and the Mendo Dope crew, they spray something called Plant Therapy in a couple of their videos. I have one spray i like, next to try is this one

Plant Therapy
Ingredients
Organic Soy oil – 38%, Organic Peppermint – .5%, Citric Acid – .25%,
Label Inert Ingredients
Purified Walter, Isopropyl Alcohol, Soap, and Sodium Citrate (baking soda sub.) – Total – 61.25%

Application Rates
SHAKE concentrate WELL before measuring. Add water to your application sprayer.
Add 2 tbsp. (1oz.) of concentrate per 1 gallon of water.
Shake/agitate mixed contents of sprayer before applying to plants. Agitate as needed during use, approximately every 5 minutes. Close cap of concentrate tightly when not in use.
***DO NOT STORE PRODUCT IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT***

now for the goofy part, you see each of these ingredients can be store bought, the hang up is they are sold in retail sizes....the peppermint oil comes in 15ml bottles....the soybean oil comes in 32oz bottles. This is my regions stores, yours may have different sizes available.
so you see these are the numbers you must work with in calculating the formula, remember we are making a concentrate.

ok so with that i just bought all the stuff i need right in town, i replace the Sodium Citrate with Sodium Bicarbonate...meh it all works whatever.
I've hacked up a spreadsheet to quickly calc out what i need for a batch.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17beO-jbYH0yTEkNi2NCzRWkPRHYi7zbRWLSwbQZkB80/edit?usp=sharing
you have to make your own copy to edit



what you now do is change the green cell until the lowest limiting ingredient size you have fits. i have 32oz soybean oil so i can only make .66gal of concentrate...with the 15ml of peppermint i will only need 12.49ml, so ill have some left over.
ok remember this?
Add 2 tbsp. (1oz.) of concentrate per 1 gallon of water
so that .66 gallon concentrate i just made can make 84 gallons of spray because there's 84 fl oz (.66 of a gallon) and 1 oz makes 1 gallon

shoutout to @JimmiP for help in foliar sprays, now to go test this and see how it works.

edit: i need to look at the soap amount, think it's too high. will fix in post edit if need to.

1oz:1gal mix

 

[SlumVill]

Thanks for this brotha!! Why do you think PH matters in this case?

 

[mudballs]

Thanks for this brotha!! Why do you think PH matters in this case?

high ph is a primary inhibitor of mold growing. if this mix had a low ph it would raise eyebrows at first glance

 

[xtsho]

I've been mixing up my own sprays for years as have many others. It's ridiculous to pay what they want for some oil, water, and citric acid. I've got several sprays I make and use.

 

[mudballs]

I've been mixing up my own sprays for years as have many others. It's ridiculous to pay what they want for some oil, water, and citric acid. I've got several sprays I make and use.

wonderful contribution to my thread, gee thanx for walking through my door, raising your nose, and proclaiming what you do.

edit:i can't edit original post anymore, the ISO alcohol used should be the 70% variant

 

[DCcan]

edit: i need to look at the soap amount, think it's too high. will fix in post edit if need to.

Try a surfactant, usually 1/2 the rate of soap without pushing up the ppm with potassium.

 

[mudballs]

Try a surfactant, usually 1/2 the rate of soap without pushing up the ppm.

i tried duplicating the recipe for anyone using home ingredients as a base, but now yes i can start playing around with it. which surfactants have you found worked best for you? i have been thinking of using raw aloe vera gel from my plant outside.

 

[xtsho]

wonderful contribution to my thread, gee thanx for walking through my door, raising your nose, and proclaiming what you do.

edit:i can't edit original post anymore, the ISO alcohol used should be the 70% variant

You're welcome.

 

[SlumVill]

i tried duplicating the recipe for anyone using home ingredients as a base, but now yes i can start playing around with it. which surfactants have you found worked best for you? i have been thinking of using raw aloe vera gel from my plant outside.

Now that I noticed, why did you think your soap amount was too high? Just curious because I don't see how that could cause any problems.

You can use powdered soap nuts or yucca extracts as well for surfactants/saponification.

 

[mudballs]

Now that I noticed, why did you think your soap amount was too high? Just curious because I don't see how that could cause any problems.

You can use powdered soap nuts or yucca extracts as well for surfactants/saponification.

with surfactants, a little bit goes a long way. the real Plant Therapy label i copy pasted doesn't list the ratios for it's soap so i have to pick something out of thin air to start from. the ratio i picked called for 24ml of castile soap and thats a lot for just over half a gallon of mix...but then i thought that it is a concentrate, and balancing the sodium bicarb amount lead to that, so it's a good amount as is....end result is a nice and slimey coating with residual power.

 

[DCcan]

i tried duplicating the recipe for anyone using home ingredients as a base, but now yes i can start playing around with it. which surfactants have you found worked best for you? i have been thinking of using raw aloe vera gel from my plant outside.

Either a glycerol non ionic (5ml/gal) or a yucca based OMRI like Thermx70, that's more foamy than the first.

 

[CatHedral]

i tried duplicating the recipe for anyone using home ingredients as a base, but now yes i can start playing around with it. which surfactants have you found worked best for you? i have been thinking of using raw aloe vera gel from my plant outside.

Dish soap.

 

[zazapacks]

You could also recreate Athena IPM from their SDS. They are all pretty much the same. Soap/surfactant, essential oils, something to raise the ph, maybe throw in an emulsifier.

 

[klx]

Thanks for this thread. I have been looking into making a citric acid spray to add to my arsenal. I will give your recipe a shot as I like the idea of having the spreadsheet so I can track the ratios and tweak it if need be. I will make Sodium Citrate as it is simple to do and acts as an emulsifier.

The Citric Acid and Sodium Citrate are powders so what conversion did you use for the measurements? 1ml = 1g?

I have 99% ios alcohol so I will adjust that accordingly.

Thanks again!

 

[mudballs]

The Citric Acid and Sodium Citrate are powders so what conversion did you use for the measurements? 1ml = 1g?

Ur welcome. No it wasnt really a mental conversion like that but it does work like that. It had to be a teensy amount so it just workd to fill in the blanks that way

 

[klx]

Ur welcome. No it wasnt really a mental conversion like that but it does work like that. It had to be a teensy amount so it just workd to fill in the blanks that way

No worries, Ill start with that and go from there. I am wondering if Canola oil would be a good sub for the Soy oil. Cant seem to find pure Soy oil locally seems to be all mixed veg oil containing soy, but I can get pure canola.

 

[mudballs]

No worries, Ill start with that and go from there. I am wondering if Canola oil would be a good sub for the Soy oil. Cant seem to find pure Soy oil locally seems to be all mixed veg oil containing soy, but I can get pure canola.

should be fine there

 

[klx]

Just an FYI for anyone making this, there is an error in the formula for Sodium Citrate in cell E13 that needs correcting before changing the amount.

Cheers

 

[SlumVill]

Just an FYI for anyone making this, there is an error in the formula for Sodium Citrate in cell E13 that needs correcting before changing the amount.

Cheers

Whats the error?

 

[klx]

Whats the error?

When you change the value in E1 to how much you want to make it does not update the Sodium Citrate amount. You need to change it as per below:

Current =128*(C13/100)
Should be =E1*(128*(C13/100))

Cheers