Subject: Re: Safer soap

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 1997 13:43:32 -0500 (EST)

Jack,

Potassium is a conundrum of major proportions  matched, perhaps, by sodium.
You may have hit the key reacting ingredients, I really don't know nor do I
have the scientific skills nor equipment to make any reliable scientific
judgments thereon. 

One of the qualities, if that word can be used, about some of the less
expensive, very ordinary dishsoaps may be a minimum of potassium and sodium
both. 

My personal hit is that the emulsifying qualities of such compounds may
simply help the detergent, whatever the price, to penetrate the nether
regions of the buggies and by sticking thereto make bug life a bit less
attractive in those spots. It isn't that I don't respect the bugs, just that
I prefer them to be elsewhere less damaging to the infected plants.

The Tincture of Green Soap which Lily sold up until 1991 was a very plain,
very old fashioned soap used in hospitals for a zillion jobs where a soap was
needed which did the job no questions asked. I have used it most happily and
successfully in my gardens for more years than I may want to count. Like many
things which I once considered reliable and effective to do a job, it seems
to have become unprofitable and therefore was discarded.

Milo Clark
Berkeley CA USA