Homemade Lavender Bug Repellent

Maybe two years ago I bought a big bottle of lavender oil cheap, and recently looked in vain for the same product -- rumored now to be nothing but cheap oil and water with synthetic lavender smell sent over in bulk from China -- because it worked so well for me as a spray-able bug and mosquito repellent. All the new options were expensive. But I did find online that I could make my own.

One method is to drip 40 drips of lavender essential oil into 2 ounces of distilled water, adding perhaps a little vegetable oil so the spray will cling to the skin. The other is to start from zero with culinary-quality lavender buds. I had all the ingredients, and began by boiling four tablespoons of lavender buds in one cup of water for a little while, and letting it cool, keeping the pot lid on so the lavender smell doesn't dissipate.

Then I strained the buds out of the water, which to my delight and surprise had turned lavender color.

To make the liquid into a bug repellent body spray rather than a room spray, using a glass jar I added the lavender liquid to 1/2 cup of Witch Hazel (a herb-based liquid milder than rubbing alcohol, used as a skin cleaner and toner, very cheap) and 1/4 cup of liquid coconut oil. Then I lidded and shook the jar real well and poured two ounces of the result into a lavender-color-coded spray bottle. I stored that bottle and the remaining liquid in the fridge, as recommended. Can't wait to see if it works. Mother Nature here in Missouri been in hard labor trying to give birth to spring. An advantage of the unusually cold weather is that the bug population has not yet mobilized. I am prepared.

Nothing Bit Me All Summer

"Lavender is an insect repellent," the Lavender Farm nearby had advised. That place, of happy memory, lost its lovely scenic lavender crop from alternating years of flooding and drought. But when their brand of lavender oil ran out I bought a 16-ounce bottle from Amazon and have used it ever since as insect repellent, pre-treating myself against bites and bugs before stepping out and meanwhile smelling pretty good.

Somebody told me that lavender oil at the Amazon price I paid is probably not real lavender oil but swill from big tanks of chemicals in China, but I just couldn't see letting that ruin my day. The darned stuff, no matter what it is, works just as well, whether cloudy (it turned cloudy) or clear.

Caution that lavender oil as a bug repellent doesn't serve everyone. I drenched a friend in it before we went bushwhacking. Chiggers still bit him and so covered him with those volcanic bites that he was bedridden with nausea. Usually he deserved bad things to happen to him, but not that time.