All natural insecticide

A friend of mine just shared his recipe for natural insecticide. I thought I'd pass it on to you. Any other versions out there?

Brew up some chili peppers, garlic, maybe some tobacco and/or vinegar and use that to spray your plants instead of chemical insecticide. Just be careful that what you are planting isn't something that is super susceptible to acid. Chemical free and aphid free.

I used to sprinkle the pepper/onion scraps around the perimeter of my small garden regularly (I made a ton of salsa) and it really did the job for not only insects but small mammals as well.

From a permaculture perspective, the idea is grow things in such a way that you don't need any insecticide.

Usually the existance of an insect problem is proof that you are doing things wrong.  And that usually means that you don't have enough diversity.

So what would be permaculture methods for preventing insects--or rather "pests"?

The magic bullet for almost all insect problems is diversity.  You rarely see insect problems when you have a polyculture.  If you do see insect problems, it is probably because that spot is not a good spot for that plant.

The way of thinking in permaculture is generally very different from conventional gardening or organic gardening (and almost all organic gardening is the same as conventional gardening with the chemical  stuff replaced with organic stuff).

Another route is to plant stuff that repels the problem insect and to plant stuff the attracts the insects that eat the problem insect.