Handmade Organic Mosquito Repellent (HOMeR)

An alternative was incense coils, which fill the air with smoke containing insecticides and, indeed, the mosquitoes keep away. Wise of them – we didn't like the coils much more than they did.

We tried all the commercial herbal preparations, but they weren't effective.

Finally we found a good answer. We planted three stalks of Thai lemon grass (Cymbopogon citratus) that we'd bought at a local market, and after a few months they grew into a composite clump about 15" across (38 cm). We used a lot of stalks for cooking, but the clump didn't seem to get any smaller. We cut the tops every couple of weeks because it would start to shade out the other plants in the herb bed (it gave us lots of green stuff for the compost), but it quickly grew back. And it kept the mosquitoes away. It contains something similar to citronella oil, it's a safe and natural insect repellent that's just as effective as the commercial chemical products. Lemon grass is more effective than citronella.

Rubbing the long, grassy leaves on the skin worked well, but the stalk worked even better.

Here's how:

• Take one stalk of fresh lemon grass. Grip it near the ground and give it a sharp sideways tug to break it off from the clump.
  
  
• Peel off the outer leaves, snap off the grass blades behind the swollen stem at the base.
  
  
• Bend the stem between your fingers, loosening it, then rub it vigorously between your palms so that it fractures into a kind of fibrous juicy mass, and rub this mass over all exposed skin, covering thoroughly.

It's pleasant on the skin, it has a pleasant smell, and it's effective: it gave us 98% protection at sundown, 100% any other time, and the effect lasted about 4–5 hours.

In most places, where the mosquitoes are less fanatical, you can use less and it'll last longer.

We tried making tinctures so we could spray it, and it worked just as well. We used whatever booze we could find in the booze cupboard (we don't drink, but somehow people kept giving it to us): chop up the cores of five or six stalks of lemon grass, put them in a blender with a tumblerful of spirits, blend thoroughly, strain, and put it in a sprayer.

The extremely cheap Chinese brandy went first, the not so cheap Absolut vodka worked even better and we didn't smell quite as much like winos, and when that was finished we used London Dry Gin.

Then we found it didn't need the spirits. We'd thought alcohol was required to dissolve the lemon grass essential oil, but it worked just as well if you blended it with water. Just shake the sprayer before using it.

After we moved to Japan, we ran a small organic farm in a farming village not far from Kyoto, and again we were surrounded by rice paddies which bred plenty of mosquitoes – not as fierce as the Lantau variety, but not exactly toothless either.

But we couldn't get lemon grass in Japan, and anyway it wouldn't have over-wintered: the summers are hot, but it freezes in winter.

Instead we bought some lemon grass essential oil, which is easy to find and not very expensive. We added a couple of other essential oils for extra effectiveness: we found a combination of lemon grass oil, citronella oil and eucalyptus oil gives good protection all day.

Mix about 1 ml each of lemon grass oil, citronella oil and eucalyptus oil with 100–150 ml of water.

Magic herb

Lemon grass is also an effective herbal anti-fungal medicine (lemon grass tea) and in Puerto Rico people use the fibrous stalks as a natural toothbrush! Clean and tingling fresh! (Try it!)

This large clump of lemon grass grew from three small stems

According to the CRC Ethnobotany Desk Reference by Tim Johnson, lemon grass is traditionally used in various parts of the world as an antiseptic, antispasmodic, carminative, cyanogenetic, dentrifice, diaphoretic, diuretic, emmenagogue, expectorant, pectoral, preventative (cold), stimulant, sudorific, and tonic, used to treat common cold, consumption, cough, depurative, dyspepsia, elephantiasis, fever, flu, gingivitis, headache, hypertension, insecticide, leprosy, malaria, mouth sores, neuritis, pneumonia, pyorrhea, rheumatism, sprains, and toothache.

The Aromatic and Medicinal Plants Index at the Purdue Guide to Medicinal and Aromatic Plants has a lot of information on lemon grass, also listing it as an insect repellent and a medicinal plant, and says it's used in food and confections, in perfumes and cosmetics, soaps and creams, as a flavouring in soft drinks, and as a mask for industrial bad smells.
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/med-aro/factsheets/LEMONGRASS.html

Other plant oils mosquitoes don't like are citronella, jojoba, neem, witch hazel, tea tree oil, peppermint, lemon basil, lemon oregano, lemon geranium, catnip, eucalyptus and pennyroyal.

Dr James A. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases lists lemon grass among 252 plants traditionally used as insecticides, 436 for malaria, 439 toothache, 58 for gum inflammation, 42 mouthwashes, 89 dentifrices, 15 for gum disease.
http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/index.html

Three-quarters of modern medical drugs are plant-based. Most plant species haven't yet been studied for their potential medical benefits. Meanwhile thousands of plant species are lost forever each year because of deforestation and industrialized farming methods.

The mosquito menace