Insecticides~what do you use and why?

[SprigOfTheLivingDead]

I recently purchased some NorCal Nutrients 86 to try on aphids and I'm a fan. I've tried insecticdal soap baths and soil drenches. I've tried neem cake, which frankly smells like someone farted in a bucket before securing the lid. I've tried some concentrated oils for making drenches to deal with fungal gnats, but this stuff is the only stuff I've truly seen be effective on aphids WITHOUT hurting the plant.

I'm a fan . Plus it doesn't smell like crap.

 

[Beekissed]

So far the Neem isn't impressing me any...the Jap beetles are still chewing their way through my apple trees, my apples, my taters, my beans and anything else they choose to light upon. Not only that, but they are mating like it's a Roman orgy, whereas this Neem advertises itself as slowing down on the munching and the mating of these leaf sucker bugs....not happening.

So, I pulled out the old standby sweet lime and dusted the beans and put up JB traps, trapping hundreds already...emptied those out for the chickens and they were snapped up like snacks.

Then I went through the squash and pumpkins, putting all the millions of squash bug eggs I found in soapy water, along with any adults I found. I also found and disposed of striped cuke beetles.

Looks like it will be an all out war of hand to hand combat this season as I go out each morning and evening to remove all I can by hand, then keep dusting leaves with sweet lime to desiccate the little suckers.

 

[lcertuche]

I have used garlic, pepper and a squirt of dishsoap for an insecticide for my lettuce. I usually don't use anything unless they are really chew up bad. I do pick of tomato hornworms or other bugs if I see them. If I see a squash leave wilting I will cut off the entire stem into the ground to try and get rid of squash borers. Last year I didn't have them for the first time but it was a new garden spot.

 

[digitS']

The Japanese beetles are not here, although there have been a number of scares in recent years with one or two showing up in the traps the state agencies set out.

Bee, my inclination was to say, "why don't you try spinosad?" So, first I checked what Cooperative Extension has to say. Unfortunately, U of Minnesota advises Neem and tells us, "Spinosad
usually effective against other foliage insects, does not have much effect against Japanese beetles."

Well, shoot ... I may have to use spinosad for the potato bugs on the potatoes soon. There have been a rather steady number for me to pick off. Not much damage and not too long before I begin digging the spuds. The bugs preferred food, eggplant, requires careful watching. They have been sprayed once but those bugs are in the garden and just the mobile adults might do extensive damage in a matter of days.

Maybe the neem warrants continued use in one corner of your garden, Bee'. Repeat sprayings may be required before anything at all results from them.

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

You guys talk about potato bugs, japanese beetles, stink bugs, etc. Believe it or not but I would like to see them in a garden to see what they look like but just not mine.

Mary

 

[digitS']

@ninnymary I am heading out into this heat in a little while and if there are the number of potato beetles on the spuds that were there the last time I was there, those plants will be sprayed and maybe I can get a snapshot of the bugs.

Here's something from the Cornell labs: click. Notice the nasty pile of eggs in the upper right picture. Then, the absolutely shredded plants in the picture below that ..!! I have never had potatoes with that much of a problem. Eggplants yes - pre-Spinosad. I was spraying every week and there were times when I could see the adults crawling across the ground heading for those plants while I was there. My garden there was right in the middle of about 9 acres of mostly weeds with a fair amount of nightshade for the beetles to get started on. Once they detected my eggplants, there was no way I could stop them with a bug spray with so little persistence - unless I was going to be there night & day!

Here's a stink bug: click. Those things and the squash bugs: click can be on squash plants in such numbers that those big plants will start to weaken and die! That has mostly happened in my garden when I have had problems with the sprinklers and the plants are stressed from dehydration. My bet is that any stress will lower their resistance to these pests.

Steve

 

[Beekissed]

You guys talk about potato bugs, japanese beetles, stink bugs, etc. Believe it or not but I would like to see them in a garden to see what they look like but just not mine.

Mary

Miss Mary, get down on your prayer bones and thank the good Lord you don't see them in your garden. There's a certain helpless feeling one gets when the garden is chock full of bugs trying to kill your plants as quickly as you can grow them. It's a sad sort of desperation.

I never used to have Jap beetles and the other bugs in small numbers but not enough to cause major problems, but these past few years have been epic. Where I used to live it was all about the potato bug/beetle...they were everywhere! But, I didn't have the other pests to deal with.

No potato beetles here.......yet.

Did get slugs for the first time last year and they seem to be here to stay now.

 

[Ridgerunner]

You guys talk about potato bugs, japanese beetles, stink bugs, etc. Believe it or not but I would like to see them in a garden to see what they look like but just not mine.

Mary

And I thought you were a sweet lady.

 

[thistlebloom]

Did get slugs for the first time last year and they seem to be here to stay now.

Those slugs likely rode in on the fall leaves you collected. I never had slugs either, but I think I got them the same way. I hauled many truckloads of leaves in from fall cleanups.
Sorry you're having so many bug issues, it is a discouraging battle. Hopefully it will turn around for you and you'll get some kind of balance soon.

 

[Beekissed]

Those slugs likely rode in on the fall leaves you collected. I never had slugs either, but I think I got them the same way. I hauled many truckloads of leaves in from fall cleanups.
Sorry you're having so many bug issues, it is a discouraging battle. Hopefully it will turn around for you and you'll get some kind of balance soon.

I think they came on the taters from my brother's house....he had truck loads of mushroom mulch hauled in a few years back and then was inundated with millions of slugs, then he gave me taters...that I didn't wash and were probably loaded with millions of slug eggs..and I planted them. And so on and on it goes.

Could have been the leaves, but I'm betting on the slug eggs on the seed taters. Which is why folks who sell seed potatoes advertises them as being "clean", which never really mattered to me before but it sure does now.