Gardening advice from Consumer Reports - Not very impressive

How did TPP miss this? The Phactors do subscribe to CR, but no recall of an article on gardening, but then again TPP seldom reads gardening advice columns or articles. At any rate organizations and publications like CR have value only when what they report is well-researched and accurately presented. So why did the good people over at The Garden Professors' Blog get so exercised? Because the advice to use clove oil was not well researched nor accurately presented. And TPP would further point out that among the various essential oils, oil of cloves is expensive and a known carcinogen. The lesson here is that not all of the alternative chemicals suggested to treat garden problems work and they are not themselves problem free. The CR response is quite unsatisfactory, but go to the link and check it out yourself. Clove oil used to be part of many histochemical recipes, but generally much cheaper oil of wintergreen, which can be synthesized, was used as a substitute even 45 years ago when TPP did that type of research. Our labs did smell pretty good at times.