This dissertation follows the evolution, outcomes, and social context shaping participatory research on homemade insecticidal plant extracts, otherwise known as botanical sprays. The project was embedded within a long-term, farmer-led initiative that advances agroecological knowledge and practice among smallholders in northern and central Malawi. The non-profit that leads this initiative – Soils Food and Healthy Communities – facilitates a farmer-to-farmer network that conducts participatory research, training events, and community dialogues. This study emerged in response to network members’ interest in rebuilding and strengthening practical knowledge of botanical sprays. Drawing on the fields of landscape and human ecology, political agroecology, and feminist political ecology, it discusses the material and social outcomes of participatory agroecological experimentation and considers how they are entangled with household and community knowledge politics. It demonstrates that homemade botanical sprays can effectively reduce pest pressure on maize and beans and that practice outcomes are influenced by landscape context. The dissertation offers insight into how farmers perceive and prioritize alternative paradigms for pest management. Taken together, these chapters reflect on the complexity and potential for participatory praxis and farmer-to-farmer approaches to enable food sovereign futures rooted in situated smallholder knowledge. It argues that scaling up agroecology requires participatory and transdisciplinary approaches that attend to the social processes of building situated knowledge.