Kenny Coogan: Your products are billed as safe enough for schools and hospitals. How exactly do they work without harsh synthetic chemicals?
J.B. Williams: I’m a chemical engineer and what we call rosemary oil or lemon oil or pine oil or cedarwood oil is really a laundry list of different organic chemical compounds of which I recognize and we know from experience which one of these has an effect on insects and which doesn’t. And we know that from the chemical nature of it. Experiments with insects over the years ’cause some are tuned to different ones. So we’re all using chemical methods. And ours are higher quality.
And I think that’s, the harsh synthetic chemicals, pesticides are cheaply made from raw oil initially. And and that’s their niche. They can make them cheap and [00:01:00] spray them over billions and millions of acres. And the essential oils are natural. They’re harder to make. They’re more distilled. They’re more refined and they’re just a higher level of material. They’re safe for schools, for pets. It, you can spray our products on a lawn and have your kids go out and run out their barefoot. You can spray our products on your lawn or your garden and have the animals go right out there.
There is no, what they call reentry time, as you’ll see on lots of signs, they put in yards or farms or wherever. What we’re doing is natural and healthy to begin with, so we just come from a different place. It’s effective. But we’ve had to study it. Don’t need hard synthetic chemicals to do anything.
Josh Wilder: Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s [00:02:00] natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
Kenny Coogan: Good day everyone. I am Kenny Coogan, and joining me on this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends is JB Williams. JB has formulated sustainable products for agriculture and pest control since 2008. Today we are digging deeper into sustainable solutions for our gardens, farms, and planet. We’re gonna be talking about those tiny terrors in our soil and crops, including invasive insects and the myths that keep buzzing around them.
Welcome to the podcast, JB.
J.B. Williams: Thanks, Kenny. I [00:03:00] appreciate the invite. By trade I’m a chemical engineer and I’ve been a formulator for decades of which the past nearly 19 years has been formulating organic and natural replacements for artificial fertilizers, soil amendments, fungicides insecticides and repellents replacing toxic synthetic chemicals based on oil products with products that are made from the rest of the natural world, be they animal, vegetable, or mineral, getting people less exposure to toxic chemicals while still performing the same functions as the synthetic chemicals they replace.
Organic Crops and Their Non-Organic Neighbors
Kenny Coogan: We have a one acre homestead in North Carolina that’s very natural. We have a lot of wild flowers and we have all of our vegetable [00:04:00] crops. And just the other day we saw some guy wearing a backpack spraying our neighbors evergreen trees, which are 15 or 20 feet away from our vegetable crops, and we got a little nervous.
J.B. Williams: Kenny, that happens all across the country and people can can obey organic statutes and be certified organic and do everything right and still have some exposure from their neighbors, their farm neighbors their golf course neighbors, their. They’re neighbors still get some exposure to toxic chemicals on their foodstuff that way. And that’s why I always say wash your vegetables very well. It’s great if they’re organic. I certainly advise buying organic, but even wash those ’cause you never know when you’re going to get just a little spillover. Yeah. Of what you don’t want.
Top 3 Invasive Insects Affecting US Crops
[00:05:00]
Kenny Coogan: So let’s jump into what are some of the most common invasive insects that are affecting or threatening the crops in the us?
J.B. Williams: The, over the past 10 or 15 years, okay. Three types of insects have really jumped to the forefront there. And of course the first is the and you have these in Carolina, brown marmorated stink bugs. Okay, that’s an invasive pest, which came first to this country. We first became a problem about 2005, 2010, somewhere in there. And now we see those all across the country, even here in Florida. Earth fertilizers, blends, materials, and we sell through a distributor’s network. So I get reports back from all across the country [00:06:00] as to what they’re fighting right now. And sometimes they tell me what works and sometimes they ask me what works.
But the brown marmorated stink bugs. has been one of the top three for the past few years. Another one, a course and you’ve seen these, and this is in Carolina too, and I’m not sure what part of Carolina you’re talking about, but it’s the whole state is the spotted lantern fly. Okay. The spotted lantern fly is a, is another Asian insect that, that hijacked its way over here or hitchhiked 10 to 15 years ago.
And like the brown marmorated stink bugs, it might have some kind of parasitic wasp or other natural predator that exists in Asia or Africa, where these bugs had been habituated for many millions of years, but they didn’t hitchhike over with them. So we get the scourge without the natural cure that keeps it in [00:07:00] check wherever it’s from. When these things get here they just take off running and I usually hear about them within a year or two of their initial appearance here. And the third one is the emerald ash borer, but I’m gonna widen that to borer insects in general. Okay. I see three nowadays that are very common. A Pine Boer, which has taken forests in Western United States and in Canada and is a scourge over millions of acres. Of course, its cousin, the emerald ash boer, which is now headquartered in a Midwestern United States, probably near to half the United States, is infested with these emerald ash boars, which and boar of insects all act the same way. They go to the trunk of a tree, whatever tree they find the tastiest and bore in horizontally in that trunk [00:08:00] surface. And it doesn’t take but a year or two for them to build enough nest, reproduce and have, having bored enough holes to stop the xylem flow of water and flowing of food and just.
Make the tree into a, you’ll see it start it’ll starve itself because the borers have gone through it. And this happened the first time in 2011. Okay. I was familiar with the ash borer and the pine borer, and someone called me I’m in Weeki Wachee Florida down here in the jungle. So when I try these pest repellents and such that I make here, I have a very good experimental ground to to test them in.
And a lady called me from up the coast in Pensacola and said she had. Some kind of boring insect in her laurels in her bay trees. Never heard of that. Okay. And still didn’t when I first did my research, it wasn’t until a couple years later where that [00:09:00] infestation that she had seen early had come out.
But the boar insects I’ll go across species. Some of them we can treat with some materials. Others, there aren’t any, like the emerald ash bore. Not really any natural controls yet, but I think those are the three most common spotted lantern fly brown marmorated stink bug, and all sorts of boring beetle insects.
What makes invasive bugs different from native pests
Kenny Coogan: And what makes these invasive bugs different from native pests is the damage they cause more severe. Or are they just trickier to manage?
J.B. Williams: Yeah I think Kenny you’re right in the second one because these are invasive, mean, they came in from some other part of the world. And as we noted that other part of the world, they would have, they would be part of a food web or they would have a predator or multiple predators keeping them [00:10:00] in check in their native lands.
But you bring them over here and they don’t have those controls. So it takes a couple of years, but after they get loose outta there it, if there’s no native controls here it’s difficult to just get a handle on ’em to start with. Okay? It’s when you bring something out of its environment with its own natural controls, put it somewhere where there aren’t those all the synthetic and natural other controls in the world are it, it’s difficult. I again, locally, there’s a snail, a giant African snail that was imported to Florida I think in the fifties or sixties at that time. They spent a lot of money. The good thing about the snail is it doesn’t move fast, so it’s territory. So his territory doesn’t get as big as quickly as say a spotted lantern fly, or even a stink bug.
But [00:11:00] they trudge onwards. The first infestation in the fifties or sixties was handled here in Florida and we had about a 30 or 40 year repose from it. But even now, some in lumber or some kind of products from Asia, somebody brought more, or perhaps as some kind of strange pet ’cause these snails are as big as the palm of your hand. Somebody had has brought back these giant Africans land snails to Florida, and in fact there’s some neighborhoods about 10 miles south of me where they’ve had to quarantine okay. For the foreseeable future as they go yard to yard, home to home building, to building to make sure they exterminate all these snails.
So they are tricky to manage once they get in.
Kenny Coogan: I wrote a Ted Ed talk about [00:12:00] all of the invasive organisms that can be found in Florida ’cause Miami was the epicenter of invasive species.
J.B. Williams: It is in the port of Jacksonville and of course the Port of Tampa would like to give them a run for their money. Another issue that we have in Florida here that they don’t other places in the United States is we don’t have as many native insects as, as much United States does because we’ve only been land for a few million years. We don’t have this 500 million or billions of year history as other land masses do for these bugs to rise up and still be under control. Everything’s new here. You let something loose here and it’s probably gonna go for you for a while. Okay. And that goes from a African land snail to a giant [00:13:00] reticulated python. Yeah. All who will be losing the same acre of land in the glads.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, there’s lots of niches to be filled in Florida.
J.B. Williams: Yes. Yep.
How do Earth’s Fertilzers Work
Kenny Coogan: Now your products are billed as safe enough for schools and hospitals. How exactly do they work without harsh synthetic chemicals?
J.B. Williams: These terms harsh synthetic chemicals, that’s it. It sounds bad but the oils that we use to make up our products are really, another cocktail of chemicals. I’m a chemical engineer and what we call rosemary oil or lemon oil or pine oil or cedarwood oil is really a laundry list of different organic chemical compounds of which I recognize and we know from experience which one of these has an effect on insects and which doesn’t. And [00:14:00] we know that from the chemical nature of it. Experiments with insects over the years ’cause some are tuned to different ones. So we’re all using chemical methods. And ours are higher quality.
And I think that’s, the harsh synthetic chemicals, pesticides are cheaply made from raw oil initially. And and that’s their niche. They can make them cheap and spray them over billions and millions of acres. And the essential oils are natural. They’re harder to make. They’re more distilled. They’re more refined and they’re just a higher level of material. They’re safe for schools, for pets. It, you can spray our products on a lawn and have your kids go out and run out their barefoot. You can spray our products on your lawn or your garden and have the animals go right out there.
There is no, what they call reentry time, as you’ll see on lots of signs, they put in yards or [00:15:00] farms or wherever. What we’re doing is natural and healthy to begin with, so we just come from a different place. It’s effective. But we’ve had to study it. Don’t need hard synthetic chemicals to do anything.
Chemical Free Labels
Kenny Coogan: I do get frustrated when I see labels that say, chemical free because everything is made out of atoms and molecules and therefore everything is made out of chemicals.
J.B. Williams: Yes, absolutely. It is all language in it. So safe enough for schools and hospitals, safe enough for people and pets. No reentry time. No harsh synthetic chemicals.
The Promise of Chitosan
Kenny Coogan: I am really into carnivorous plants and they have a chemical called chitinase, which breaks down chitin. And I noticed you use a unique ingredient called chitosan. Can you explain how that works in [00:16:00] pest control and plant health?
J.B. Williams: I’d love to you’ve mentioned chitin and of course the enzyme that, that plants and animals use to break it down when they, it’s presented as food stuff is chitinase, chitosan is a chitin material that’s been processed a little bit to modify it chemically and it too, and, but it still occurs in nature as chitosan. Chitin occurs in bug shells. Human nails. And other coatings for animals and plants. And in microbes. Cin, which is very closely related, they’re both polysaccharides, okay? Occurs in some fungi and other microbes too. They just use this different variant. But you can make CIN. Which is what we do. It’s a sustainable material and it has many wonderful properties, which would be certainly enough for a whole nother podcast.[00:17:00]
Okay. How that works in pest control is chitosan is a wonderful antimicrobial. It’s a wonderful antibacteria stat. It’s a wonderful antifungal and it also has effects on those effects are well known. And we use them. We use them as in our products. ’cause the EPA just approved chitosan 18 months ago as a natural micro antimicrobial, as a natural antibacterial, as a natural coating for anti fungal coatings, mold, and mind mildew.
You can take a solution of chitosan, paint it pressure washer driveway. Paint it with the chitosan and the mold won’t come back. It’ll prevent it from recolonizing. So that’s how our product Shell Power, which is a state registered fungicide, [00:18:00] microbicide acts and we use that in ag. We use that against fungus and lawn and garden.
We use it in as these antimicrobial, antifungal products in a whole wide variety of applications. And it also comes in an insect pest control because it acts as an extender for our products. So there’s a lot of uses for it. It’s natural, sustainable, non-allergenic. And a wonderful addition. I’m glad the EPA knowing this for so many years, they’ve been able to use CIN in many other industries. Pest control is tightly regulated, and it was only in 2023 that they finally allowed us to market it as an antimicrobial and antifungal. And these products are just coming on the market now.
And one more thing about plant health chitosan is an excellent plant growth [00:19:00] stimulant. It will stimulate your vegetables, it will stimulate your flowers. It’ll pretty much put a growth kick into anything. And we use it as that too in our formulations. Wonderful product. We’ll talk again about it.
Resources to ID Beneficial Bugs from Bad Bugs
Kenny Coogan: I imagine many gardeners and farmers sometimes have trouble identifying the beneficial bugs from the harmful or invasive ones. Do you have a couple of resources that you recommend on how people can learn the difference?
J.B. Williams: It was tougher before the advent of the internet. Nowadays, there’s several ways. I’m in a bug identification group. I’m in a mushroom identification group. I am in a slime mold and other fungus identification group. And nowadays you would go online and find these things. And Kenny, I think there are a few [00:20:00] insects that are helpful for very certain reasons and for very narrow reasons and for very narrow markets and narrow groups of people.
Kenny Coogan: We are going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsor, and when we return, we’ll be talking about soil.
J.B. Williams: Love it, love soil Ken.
Kenny Coogan: We are back with JB Williams who has been formulating sustainable products for agriculture and pest control for decades.
Soil Health and Preventing Pests
Kenny Coogan: JB, let’s talk soil, because it seems like everything starts from there. How important is soil health in regards to preventing pest infestations?
J.B. Williams: Kenny. Healthy soil grows, healthy plants and healthy plants give healthy vegetables that are full of nutrition [00:21:00] and sugars. And that’s how we get our health. So you’re right it all does start underground and underneath the ground, of course, there’s a soil food web of its own.
With microbes and then microscopic worms, and then larger materials going up to small insects, spiders, and such. A food pyramid of its own that has to be healthy for the crop above to be healthy. If your soil’s not healthy, it’s full of, it’s not full of life as it should be. If it doesn’t have the right composition you, you’re never gonna grow great vegetables or anything up top.
Again, coming back to where I live in Florida, 95, no, 99% of the ground here is terrible. And we have to help people build soil for their lawn, for their garden, [00:22:00] for their farm. And we do that to start with by making sure they have more carbon. This soil here is light and white sugar sand, and you have to put the carbon in it.
So you do that through composting healthy materials into the soil to darken it and give it the compost, nutrition. And we also put solutions of microbial life in there. Different soil positive, soil bacteria, beneficial to all plants fungi and archaea that are going to help build soil fungi and archaea build soil and it’s their living that, that, that does it as they, these animals go through their lifecycle.
They pull more and more carbon outta wherever and put it in the soil. So it does all start there and and beneficial insects will [00:23:00] come. The ones that need to be there. You build a healthy soil for them. They’re going to appear if you take a shovel and put it down your soil and you see some earthworms and a couple of, but you’re on the right track.
If you don’t. So we’ve always started and again, although we’ve been talking about insects, invasive insects, repelling insects, the benefits and such of different kinds of pesticide treatments, it all starts with the soil. And we started many years ago building soil for farmers, right?
And and once you start there, good soil, good crops. Good veggies, let’s eat.
Earth’s Fertilizers Essential Spray
Kenny Coogan: Now you have a Essential Spray, which kind of sounds like a workhorse. How does that work on a wide variety of pests like aphids, mites, and even ants.
J.B. Williams: Essential sprays. We’ve been blending [00:24:00] for 17, 18 years now, and it’s a simple combination of essential oils and a emulsifier and a soap and it’s very broad spectrum and it’s not expensive for the farmers and such to use. We have other solutions that are more drastic but more expensive and we use it lawns and gardens and not just aphids and mites and these tiny insects like that we are, we can kill very easily. But again it’s the larger and the a different kinda lawn pests. You find it that eats your lawn up and then grasshoppers and locusts and such.
It’s been effective at that for for, as I said, it is 17 years now and it, lawn, farm garden, all of it can take essential spray and it’s it’s, it is our workhorse. Yeah. And again, we sell it in drums to distributors who put it in one in five [00:25:00] gallon buckets and sell it to end users. Commercial, private homeowners all across the country.
Widespread Use of Synthetic Pesticides
Kenny Coogan: Now speaking with you today, JB, I feel like I know your answer, but I’ll ask it anyways. What’s your perspective on the widespread use of synthetic pesticides in today’s agriculture? Are we becoming too reliant? Keeping in mind that we only have 10 minutes left, the podcast.
J.B. Williams: That’s, that’s great. And again any one of these we could go on for half an hour and, too reliant. I don’t know. We have to feed 8 billion people and we’re not doing the best job of that. And even with these pesticides, and as we said before, in the long run, those are cheaper to make than the sustainable.
Imagine it’s like gas powered cars, gasoline powered cars versus electric one is common [00:26:00] cheap and everyone can afford it in the long run, and the other is more boutique-y. But there’s a certain market for these safe sprays that we make. There’s a lot of people out there that just can’t take pesticides anymore.
One of my favorite cases ever, many years ago, here in Florida, was a Vietnam vet who had a modest home here and a modest garden, and a modest lawn, but he couldn’t use any kind of chemicals at all from his service. He was very sensitive to all lawn chemicals, any kind of bulk chemical whatsoever.
And after he tried Essential Spray and a couple other products, he said, this is the first time I’ve been able to use any kind of pesticide or repellent at all without breaking out in hives or having some kind of reaction. And there’s millions of people like that out there. So there’s always gonna be a market.
And hopefully a growing [00:27:00] one for these for these essential oil and other kinds of natural and sustainable solutions. Even in what we call an IPM and integrated pest management program where people, will vary the pesticides and then so that to keep the bugs off base, if that’s a, if you get me there and use some natural and then some synthetic and then some other predatory insects and mix ’em all up.
We can’t get, we can’t get away from synthetic pesticides. My company provides an option for people who want to.
Pesticides and Pollinator Saftey
Kenny Coogan: Can you talk about pollinator safety? There’s a huge concern about protecting the native bees and butterflies and beneficial insects. How would a chemical differentiate between the good bugs and the bad bugs? Or can it?
J.B. Williams: No, it can’t. Can the bugs tell a difference between these chemicals? [00:28:00] Yes but I wanna back up for a minute. This is a problem when you have. Harsh synthetic pesticides, which kill any things. It touches my products. And these essential oil products are more repellents. So we are doing what I call building a bubble of repellency over your house, your yard, your garden, your farm, your golf course.
And these bugs will come smell these products and detect what, whatever particular compound in the oils they don’t like and turn around and go the other way. And butterflies and bees are odd in the fact that they have different flower oils that attract them because that’s what they do for a living.
It’s balanced from flower to flower and yet they’re still repelled by others. But we’re lucky in the fact that we don’t, you put our material down, you’re not gonna be. Killing these things. Unless you just happen to [00:29:00] spray oils on one and that’s not good. But we don’t have a lot of problem with the bees or the butterflies, or we are rebuilding a repellency bubble to take care of mosquitoes, stink bugs, ticks, biting insects and leaf chewing insects.
Kenny Coogan: Before we wrap up, what innovations or trends in sustainable pest control. Are you most excited about on the horizon?
J.B. Williams: I’m excited about chitosan and only being available to, to market it for the past year and a half. It’s, and it being sustainable. . And inexpensive to start with. I think we’re gonna find a lot of uses for it as we go through the years, seeing how it compliments our, in addition to the obvious antibacteria stat, antifungals stat and antimicrobial aspects of it.
As to see what it does, certainly in combination with other [00:30:00] materials. For larger pests like that IPMI just mentioned is a program of mixed pest management that, that, that needs to be used more often. And I’d like to think that I’d like to think that the. The giant companies are gonna come in with us and help us market in these products and get away from what’s killing people. That may be an idle hope there, that may be more wishful thinking.
Misconceptions about Bugs and Pest Control
Kenny Coogan: Our last question today. What are the biggest misconceptions people have about bugs and pest control?
J.B. Williams: People still want to use the most powerful thing they can find, and that’s not necessary. It’s not difficult to kill aphids or mites, you just have to find them and make sure you treat them [00:31:00] and look under all the leaves, and then keep at it. You don’t have to go find the most powerful thing you can find. Spray it on there and and change the life of your garden. Change your plants. Change what you have to eat.
So gardeners should use less, more soil health, more plant health, and you will have less insects. If when you farm organically and grow organically or, and use natural methods, okay? You’ll have healthier plants. Less prone to infestation. So like your mom always said, make sure you eat your vegetables an apple a day keeps the doctor away and you won’t get sick. So a little bit of ounce of prevention and healthy growing and and these folks will be reaching for the ortho very rarely in the future.
Kenny Coogan: Thank you so much, [00:32:00] JB for sharing your expertise and helping us see bugs in a whole new light.
J.B. Williams: Kenny I’ve enjoyed my time and and good talking to you. Talk to you again.
Kenny Coogan: And thanks to all of you for listening. Whether you are battling beetles in your backyard or keeping aphids off your arugula, we hope today’s episode gave you some real tools to work with. Don’t forget to check out Earth’s Fertilizer at earthsfertilizer.com. And if you love this chat, leave us a review and share the episode with your favorite plant lover.
Until next time, keep your hands dirty and your pest control clean.
Josh Wilder: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. [00:33:00] You can also email us at podcast@ogdenpubs.com with any questions or suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
