Beneficial Nematodes

[yardfarmer]

Hello fellow gardeners, been long time since I posted on this forum, almost forgot my password. Ive gotten a lot of good information and advice from here so I thought Id share an experience I had as a little pay back.

Last week I lost the entire broccoli planting and most of the cabbage to the cabbage root worm. It was kinda amazing to see the broccoli wilt and die so quickly, one each day until to whole crop was gone. Each one had 3-6 worms in the stem right above the root wad.

I bought a packet of beneficial nematodes for about $18. It was a thin sponge infested with microscopic nematodes in a plastic bag, kept in a refrigerator at the nursery. After applying the nematodes, the remaining cabbage survived, and is looking good. For an added benefit, the leaf miner maggots in the beet leaves disappeared. Not sure if the nematodes attacked the leaf miners in the leaves, or attacked the leaf miner pupa in the soil. Either way, I get to enjoy beet greens once again.

Hopefully there is enough time to get a fall crop of broccoli, but this time Ill protect the broccoli plants from the root worms with something like paper or a mulch of some sort, and maybe another application of nemetodes since I don't know how long they live.

Happy Gardening!!

 

[ninnymary]

Thanks for the info. yardfarmer. I'm tired of getting beet leaf miner on my beets and swiss chard. I'm gonna look into them and see if I can find any around here.

Mary

 

[Smiles Jr.]

Thanks for sharing, yardfarmer. I must admit that I don't know much about nematodes. Can you teach us what you have learned?

 

[hoodat]

There are several species of beneficial nematodes available and often you get a mix of them in your order. They may be the ones who killed off yout leaf miners. Some species of nematodes can swim up a plant stem in just a thin film of water like a heavy dew or light rain.
Few, if any, of your nematodes will survive a cold winter so its best to reapply them in late Spring. They are very good predators on shallow soil pests and should be used more than most people do.