valley ranch
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In the greenhouse I've always used Garlic Tea with mild soap added.
Insecticides~what do you use and why?
- Thread starter Beekissed
- Start date
lcertuche
Deeply Rooted
One year we had stinkbugs but they were covering my yucca plants and except for one bug on a squash plant they did not get in the garden. I say plant yucca because they clearly preferred that to the squash.
Nyboy
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Mary do you get the giant snails, that LA has?
ninnymary
Garden Master
digitS'
Garden Master
I haven't had potato bugs on potatoes for several years. They might even prefer tomatoes (& I'm watching out for them there
) but I found one on a sunflower this morning 
!There was another spud plant with this much damage last week and I think I have now turned all the bugs there into fertilizer ... but, it took going thru on 4 different days.
Inspired with that success, I still haven't sprayed the spuds. The ones in the picture are now fertilizer and they were joined by about 20 more of their buddies off my 45' row of potato plants. Most of the plants have had zero bugs but fatigue is setting in. If I see new hatches, I'll know I have erred in not spraying them on yesterday evening.
A few seasons of experience suggests that Spinosad doesn't set the plants up for sun damage as much as some sprays do. I might just show up anytime with the sprayer if these things don't get back to the nightshade on the other side of the sprinkler pipe!
The earwigs were chewing on dahlia leaves last week. Yesterday, I discovered a whole bunch of little earwigs in lots of the dahlias. A week is too long for the spinosad that I sprayed to persist and I'm not sure how effective it is against earwigs. So, those ornamentals were sprayed with a systematic.
Earwigs get in lettuce, sweetcorn and dahlias in my gardens. They aren't much trouble except in the dahlias. Flower petals are an especially preferred food.
Steve
ChickenMomma91
Deeply Rooted
My squash plants have been over run with squash bugs. Been cutting the leaves off and burning them in my pit in the back yard. Those squash bugs get freaking huge! I had one almost the length of my thumb yeasterday and it was fat 
of my plants. We'd had so much rain I didn't even think that I would need to keep an eye on watering this past couple weeks but I was wrong
hopefully I won't need to buy any neem oil when I go shopping Sunday.
On a side note I have an 8+ foot tall sunflower right now!
of my plants. We'd had so much rain I didn't even think that I would need to keep an eye on watering this past couple weeks but I was wrong hopefully I won't need to buy any neem oil when I go shopping Sunday. On a side note I have an 8+ foot tall sunflower right now!
Zeedman
Garden Master
For the most part, I use a soap & a 50% rubbing alcohol/water mix in a horse sprayer bottle. For the soap, I've used insecticidal soap, mild dish soap, or baby shampoo. The solution kills almost anything it is sprayed on; the alcohol paralyses them long enough for the soap to work. It will spray wasps out of mid-air, and I've used it on caterpillars and squash bugs (it quickly kills adults if they are completely wet, and kills the eggs as well). I sometimes use it on aphids, but I have a very good population of beneficial insects, so I only spray the aphids if they are getting out of control... which usually means ants are spreading them, in which case I prefer to put out ant bait to control the ants, and let the predators take care of the aphids.
The same mixture will kill CPB larvae; but since I don't grow potatoes, those are seldom a problem. The few years they showed up, the litchi tomato that I grow every year proved to be a good trap crop; the larvae were easy to see & spray in the lacy foliage. The spray would kill the adults too, but it sometimes took two applications.
Striped cucumber beetles are probably the hardest pest for me to kill, they will often recover from the standard spray. Adding a little cooking oil to the mix has made it more effective, but some still survive. With soap & oil, it becomes the organic formula recommended by the USDA (although theirs did not use alcohol).
Most often, I use the spray for spot application. While it doesn't kill all cucumber beetles outright, spraying the vine tips seems to make them unpalatable to the beetles. If wider application is needed (like an outbreak of squash bugs) I spray all surfaces, wait an hour after spraying, then hose down the plants to prevent leaf burn. All of the bugs that were sprayed will be dead by that time.
Slugs can sometimes get bad late in the season, especially if it has been a wet summer. This usually happens just about the time tomatoes start ripening; if damage becomes severe, I will put out iron baits.
I use BT to control corn earworm, sprayed directly into the silks when they first appear, using a pressurized sprayer. Used that way, it is very effective against the earworms; but unfortunately, it has little impact on corn borers.
The same mixture will kill CPB larvae; but since I don't grow potatoes, those are seldom a problem. The few years they showed up, the litchi tomato that I grow every year proved to be a good trap crop; the larvae were easy to see & spray in the lacy foliage. The spray would kill the adults too, but it sometimes took two applications.
Striped cucumber beetles are probably the hardest pest for me to kill, they will often recover from the standard spray. Adding a little cooking oil to the mix has made it more effective, but some still survive. With soap & oil, it becomes the organic formula recommended by the USDA (although theirs did not use alcohol).
Most often, I use the spray for spot application. While it doesn't kill all cucumber beetles outright, spraying the vine tips seems to make them unpalatable to the beetles. If wider application is needed (like an outbreak of squash bugs) I spray all surfaces, wait an hour after spraying, then hose down the plants to prevent leaf burn. All of the bugs that were sprayed will be dead by that time.
Slugs can sometimes get bad late in the season, especially if it has been a wet summer. This usually happens just about the time tomatoes start ripening; if damage becomes severe, I will put out iron baits.
I use BT to control corn earworm, sprayed directly into the silks when they first appear, using a pressurized sprayer. Used that way, it is very effective against the earworms; but unfortunately, it has little impact on corn borers.
