Have I ruined my garden?

I sprayed my garden with the soap and water mixture. In a two gallon bucket I added 6T. dawn dish soap and sprayed it onto my plants till they dripped. Later I noticed brown coloring on my basil. I watered the garden later that day, and sort of rinced the leaves of everything off while doing so. I am noticing more brown on more then just the basil today. I see it on the spinach, the peas leaves, the tips of my oregano.. Mind you..its not every leaf, but enough to make me worry. .I'm feeling a little nautious that I may have wrecked everything. I replaced the basil today because I thought I had to....but what about the other stuff.

you probably haven't ruined your garden but don't use dish soap anymore. it isn't real soap, it's detergent. and yes, i think 6T is too much for two gallons. more like 1T per gallon will do the job.

No more dishsoap for me. I must have misread thinking I needed 4 - 6T per bucket. Dang it. I think I almost cried when I seen the discolored leaves. i Will spend some time in the evenings searching for critters for now. What is good for the lettuce, or is the critter hunt the only way?

I'm curious why you decided to spray the whole thing... do you have a major insect infestation?

It is also not advised that anything (including water) gets sprayed on garden plants during high sun.

I used the soap mixture first thing in the morning and didn't water till after supper. At this point I have to assume I misunderstood what to do with the soap mixture as I had also read to mist the plant until it dripped. New gardener here so that is what I did. However...I can also assume I probably jumped the gun. I found one of the cut wormy things burried next to my peas, and only found him because it looked like someone had dug a little hole and when I carefully dug around, he was there. I assumed there had to be more with the amount of carnage on the lettuce and other leaves through out the garden. During the day, I've only seen a couple of the skinny little green caterpiller things, but really in all honesty, I have no clue what I am looking for. All I know is I found an extremely fat worm/catapillar and lots of the new growth, especially the ones just coming out of the ground were getting totally munched. I quickly mixed up a batch of soap and started spraying....... which brings me here....worried I may have destroyed everything.

A little bit of overkill but likely you did not destroy everything. Make sure you rinse everything in clear water a few more times. Live and learn. Probably no more aphids in your garden though.

Hi there Debora
I do SORT of know how you feel. My husband did that to all my basil plants as they had aphids, and by that evening, they were all dead. Some plants are much stronger than others
Some leafy perennials likely would not have had such a problem with that stuff, but basil is a very wimpy plant.
It is worth the coddling it requires.
The wonderful thing about this forum is that you can OFT TIMES learn from others mistakes, and other times teach others from your mistakes...
its called sharing

Thanks GWN. You have no idea how grateful I am for this forum and all the wonderful people that hang out here. I jumped into the garden with both barrels loaded and not a clue as to what any of the plants will or won't do, how big they get, when you can eat them and millions of other silly questions that I know I will have.

You know that saying...if all else fails...READ DIRECTIONS?? I guess I gotta do that more.

You know that saying...if all else fails...READ DIRECTIONS?? I guess I gotta do that more.

.. I think they are just talking about GUYS in that line.

I have been gardening for years and I still learn something new every day

One of the things that new gardeners need to learn is that every bug is not a bad bug. I would invest in a good book on bugs or learn how to identify bugs via the internet. Next learn/research if the bug should be killed and what is the least toxic way to get rid of the bug. The next thing to learn is that your produce will not look like the produce in the grocery store. It will have some small brown spots on it or a leaf nibbled on by a caterpillar, but your produce will taste way, way better than the grocery stores. Healthy plants feed by compost will do a lot of the fighting to get rid of bugs without any help need from us. Please take my advice with a grain of salt, I do not means to sound preachy (but I think this post reads that way.)

Patty from Yorktown

(((hugs)))

its happen to all of us at one point or another......just....yesterday i decided to give our tomato plants a trim because some of the leaves were starting to touch the mulch around them and some of our plants are looking a bit off from all the rain we have had.....some have yellow/brown spots on their leaves and i got all freaked out and gave them all trims.....LOL....cry....the kids and hubby said they all look like trees now......long naked stems with a bushy top.....eeek.....

hugs

rose...... who is still learning how to trim a tomato plant

bt is what you want to kill Caterpillars and you already know how to kill cutworms

I agree with malefactor... BT.. or Dipel aka.. is the way to go for any kind of chomping caterpillers... stops them in their tracks !! Don't feel bad if you have to replace plants, I had a beautiful stand of tomatoes this year. We have had a run of heavy thunderstorms for the past 2 weeks and they are ALL dead..I'm starting all over...

Debora Cadene wrote:Thanks GWN. You have no idea how grateful I am for this forum and all the wonderful people that hang out here. I jumped into the garden with both barrels loaded and not a clue as to what any of the plants will or won't do, how big they get, when you can eat them and millions of other silly questions that I know I will have.

You know that saying...if all else fails...READ DIRECTIONS?? I guess I gotta do that more.

Hey Deborah, there is much to learn in gardening. You are learning something new everyday! In this thread folks have listed Other Gardening Books that are great! Most likely your local library has some of them.