Baking soda can work wonders around the house and kitchen, such as adding airiness to a quick bread recipe, tenderizing meat, or freshening laundry. But baking soda for plants in your garden can do more harm than good, despite the claims you may have come across on social media. Here's why, and what to use instead to help your garden thrive.
What Is Baking Soda?
Sodium bicarbonate, aka baking soda, is essentially a salt with a wide range of uses, including baking, odor elimination, and cleaning. Naturally gritty, slightly alkaline, and relatively safe for consumption in small amounts, baking soda is also touted as a natural alternative ingredient for many garden remedies.
Baking soda is manufactured from sodium carbonate (soda ash) and mined from the ground in the form of nahcolite or trona. Both minerals occur in large deposits throughout the world, with the largest known deposits located in the state of Wyoming.
Baking soda’s supposed anti-fungal properties have been spread around for many years as a natural home remedy to treat fungal infections, including black spot, powdery mildew, and a multitude of other fungi. When applied to plant leaves and stems, baking soda does slow or stop the growth of fungi. However, the benefits are fleeting at best.
Studies have shown that while baking soda impacts the growth of fungal spores, the spores and actively growing fungi are not killed. This is because baking soda acts on fungi by raising the pH around the plant, creating a more alkaline, somewhat inhospitable environment where fungal spores are unable to continue to grow. However, once the baking soda is washed off the plant, the pH levels return to normal, necessitating additional applications to keep fungal growth in check.
Other claims around using baking soda for plants and gardens include boosting blooms, killing weeds, and controlling insect pests. None of these are scientifically backed and aren't effective ways of achieving any of these aims.
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The Risks of Using Baking Soda for Plants
While stopping the growth of fungal spores might sound like a great idea on the surface, let's take a deeper look into using baking social in your garden.
Baking soda is a salt, and all salts—along with other minerals in excess—can be detrimental to plant growth. Salt acts as a desiccant on plants and causes wilted foliage, stunted growth, and eventually, death. Healthy plants can quickly go downhill from an excess of salts. And if you've ever seen what happens to plants in the path of de-icing salt applied in winter, you know just how detrimental high salt levels can be to plants.
Another issue with baking soda is that it can dramatically change the pH of the soil. Most plants have a preferred soil pH range in which they grow. Outside of their preferred range, they begin to have trouble absorbing certain key nutrients such as phosphorus properly and can become nutrient deficient even when fertilizer is added.
The 10 Best Fertilizers for Indoor Plants of 2024 to Help Your Greenery Thrive
Alternatives to Baking Soda
While baking soda might be touted as a safer alternative to other fungicides, it doesn’t eradicate fungal spores and has the potential to alter soil pH levels negatively. Instead of using baking soda, check out these organic alternatives.
Neem Oil
Neem oil is extracted from the neem tree native to the Old World. It works as an organic pesticide and miticide, and is an excellent fungicide. Use neem oil to treat a range of fungal infections, including powdery mildew, black spot, and rust, to name a few. Neem oil is typically mixed with water and sprayed liberally onto the leaves and stems of plants. Neem can be used on most plants and is best applied after sunset or otherwise out of direct sunlight to avoid burning plants.
Copper Spray
While copper is essential in small quantities, concentrated copper sprays fight fungal infections by destroying fungal cells on contact. Use a copper spray to prevent the spread of fungi—especially while plants are dormant. For example, copper sprays are commonly used on dormant roses and fruit trees to prevent future outbreaks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does baking soda kill weeds?
Baking soda is a salt and a high enough concentration of salt in soil will kill weeds, along with any other nearby plant, so it is not recommended for weed control.
Can baking soda sweeten tomatoes on the vine?
Baking soda has no effect on the flavor of tomatoes. The variety of tomato and other environmental factors such as watering frequency affect tomato flavor.
Baking soda is a salt, and all salts—along with other minerals in excess—can be detrimental to plant growth. Salt acts as a desiccant on plants and causes wilted foliage, stunted growth, and eventually, death. Healthy plants can quickly go downhill from an excess of salts.
To create a solution that prevents and treats disease, add a heaping tablespoon of baking soda, a teaspoon of vegetable oil, and a small amount of mild soap to a gallon of water and spray the tomato plants with this solution. This needs to be reapplied regularly to maintain its efficiency.
Is It Okay To Use Baking Soda To Kill Weeds? Technically, yes.But practically speaking, it's not ideal. Because high concentrations of sodium are toxic to plants, if you dump a bunch of dry baking soda onto a small plant, it will probably die.
If you want to try this, the University of Florida recommends one tablespoon of baking soda per gallon of water plus a spreader-sticker, like a few drops of dish soap. Measure accurately. Too high a concentration turns “help into herbicide.”
Baking soda is often used as an alternative pest control solution for pests such as co*ckroaches, bed bugs or ants. But the reality is that baking soda for pest control is not effective. Baking soda does not dehydrate insects or cut them despite claims to the contrary.
We got some surprising results. Baking soda does help green vegetables retain color, but it causes undesirable color changes in red cabbage—it turned blue. The science can be distilled to this: Adding baking soda to cooking water makes it slightly alkaline, which stabilizes the green color of chlorophyll.
If you are currently growing large varieties of tomatoes and wish to maximize the size of your tomatoes, remove the new flowers at the top of the plant as older fruit near the bottom of the plant begin to grow. This will force the plant to use its energy to produce fewer but larger tomatoes.
You'll need four to six tablespoons of coffee grounds, one teaspoon of cinnamon and one cup of club soda. Simply mix the ingredients until well combined and use on a bi-weekly basis for a slow release of nutrients without causing the soil's acidity levels to rise too much.
Tomatoes are prone to magnesium deficiency later in the growing season, which can show with yellowing leaves and diminished production. Ultra Epsom Salt treatments at the beginning of their planting and throughout their seasonal life can help to prevent and remedy magnesium deficiency in your tomato plants.
Baking soda is a salt and a high enough concentration of salt in soil will kill weeds, along with any other nearby plant, so it is not recommended for weed control.
Will Baking Soda Kill Plants? Excessively high levels of many things can kill our plants. Because baking soda increases soil pH, many of the important macro and micro nutrients plants need may become unavailable to them. Baking soda in the garden can also contribute to soil compaction and crust build-up.
Baking soda is alkaline and adding it to soil will reduce the acidity of soil. This less acidic soil produces less acidic tomatoes, which taste sweeter.
Second when tomatos begin to appear and are about 1 inch in diameter lightly sprinkle baking soda around each plant to make them sweeter. Repeat this process again when tomatoes are about half grown. I used a lot of baking soda in his picture so it would show up but about 1/4 cup per plant is plenty.
Vinegar is a contact herbicide, which means it kills the part of the plant it comes into contact with. Systemic herbicides, on the other hand, are taken up by the plant's vascular system and delivered to roots, eventually killing the whole plant instead of just its top growth.
As they break down, coffee grounds release nitrogen, an essential nutrient for healthy foliage growth. They are also a source of other primary nutrients including potassium and phosphorus, as well as micronutrients such as boron, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, and zinc. Find out more on soil basics.
Planting borage, scarlet runner beans, and other flowers near your cucumbers attracts bumblebees, whose presence helps deter cucumber beetles. Grow repellent plants. Flowers like nasturtium and marigolds, an herb such as catnip, and veggies like radishes and corn help keep cucumber beetles away.
This versatile spice can be used to help root cuttings, to prevent fungus from killing small seedlings, and even for keeping pests away from your home. Once you learn how to use cinnamon powder for plant health, you'll think twice about grabbing harsh chemicals for your gardening needs.
It sounds like it might be a good idea in theory (i.e., a good source of food (carbohydrates) for plants and microorganisms in the soil and minerals to promote better plant growth), but it doesn't work out that way. Beer doesn't help plants and, in fact, it can be detrimental.
There's actually no evidence that baking soda kills pests, despite what online blogs might tell you. (Common claims are that baking soda poisons, cuts, or dehydrates pests. In fact, a white powder that actually dehydrates pests is diatomaceous earth, so it's possible people get them mixed up.)
Mix 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon clear ammonia and 1 teaspoon Epsom salt in a gallon of water.Mix well and give each plant about a quart of the solution. This solution will work as a fertilizer, the plants that are looking dull, and growing slowly will perk up, rejuvenate their growth and become lush green.
Baking soda is one of the best ways to get rid of fleas in your home. It dehydrates the insects, making the compound a natural pesticide, but you'll also need table salt to carry the sodium bicarbonate into the flea's body. An equal mix of both will do the trick.
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Introduction: My name is Duncan Muller, I am a enchanting, good, gentle, modern, tasty, nice, elegant person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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