tobacco spray - homemade

i am looking for a good recipe for a tobacco spray. i have the tobacco plant growing now, do i have to dry the leaves before making the spray, or will green leaves work? also, does it matter when i harvest the plants (while flowering or before?). all the recipes i have found involved using cigerettes (or butts), which i would like to avoid. thanks.

also, when i have your attention, any one use wormwood as an organic bug spary? thank you.

I have only ever used dry leaves but I imagine green would work too. Dried and powdered might give you more concentrated nicotine. I like to see a good dark brown "tea" made by bringing leaf in water to a boil and let steep for a few hours or overnight. Add some liquid soap to help it stick to plants. If it is too concentrated it may damage some plants. Especially do not use on nightshade family because it can spread virus from the tobacco. And it is extremely poisonous....not for use on anything that will be used for food for quite a while.....

Tobacco spray used to be staple pesticide for farming before Big Ag. The farmers used the stalks, since the leaves were worth money.

Dry or wet will work. Cutting the flowering stalks off the plant makes the plant produce more nicotine. The best variety to use is Aztec, it doesn't get as big, but has way more nicotine then say Virginia Redleaf.

Tobacco mosaic virus is destroyed at temps just under boiling, so if you bring a pot of leaves up to a boil then turn off the heat, the virus is a non-issue. If you are growing your own, you would know if you had the virus.

I haven't had much luck with even very strong tobacco sprays, which I tried using on aphids. Some would die, but enough would survive and reproduce that control was elusive. I prefer Neem oil sprays for aphids myself, but there's no reason you couldn't use both in the same spray.

The thing to remember when making your own "bug spray" is every species is different. What insects are you trying to control?

Can I get the recipe of how much tobacco juice and soap and water to make the insecticide. It would help me a lot. I’m not computer literate and won’t know how to get your recipe so could you email it to Gouldbj@aol.com? Thank you so much.

Hi Olivia, welcome to permies.
Could you describe the problem you're having with your plants? there might be gentler ways to deal with it.
Tabacco spray is very poisonous and outlawed in most of the EU. It kills a lot of beneficial insects and is also very poisonous to people. Please try to avoid making it.

I have some tobacco for insecticide. It's the small rustica species. But I really don't know what I am doing.    Thanks for the info about boiling to kill the virus and I am interested in the stuff about soaking the stems too.  I was going to dehydrate it in my solar dehydrator because the thoughts of it hanging for 2 to 8 weeks in my house of non smokers,  just to make a pesticide does not appeal to me.   I hope to use it on spider mites.  I think spider mites are up there with tardigrades and cockroaches as the indestructible pests.  Has anyone experience with how concentrated you make it from dried leaves?  I tried to dry leaves slowly in the house a few years back, and some of them went moldy, so that was a fail for sure.  Anyone know the standard "withdrawal period" for tobacco?    

Green leaves can work, but they usually need to be chopped and steeped longer to release enough nicotine into the water. Dried leaves are more concentrated and tend to make a stronger spray with less material.