Excellent point— I too use a garlic/soap/hot pepper solution as a bug spray. Seems to help keep the ants away from the pepper blooms. Works on the lettuce leaves too—heck it seems like its a pre-picking marinade of sorts as a foliage spray. Not too heavy on the soap though....I’m also using blackboard white chalk powder on the bottom stems so the ants have a barrier they wont crossover and upwards.
I only use a drop of soap, and sometimes a drop of oil in my bug spray. I was really skeptical when I found the recipe back when I first started gardening, but I figured it was worth a try.
So I fixed it up and put it into a spray bottle. Just as I finished putting on the lid, I spied what my mom called a water bug, and let go with a squirt. Hit it dead on. It ran around for about 2 seconds, turned belly up and died.
I was astonished. It worked better than all that stuff like raid. So now I just keep a little under the sink for bugs that like to crawl in under the basement door. And that’s all I usually use for my garden plants too.