Still have whiteflies

[Marie Dodge]

OK guys, my tomatoes are still covered with whitefly and their small green babies that look like minute aphids. My friend, looking at them today, said she believes they also have spider mites. Her eyesight is better than mine. The NeemOil did almost nothing nor did the Seven dust or Malathion or Bug-Be-Gone. I also sprayed the garden with 1 Tbs. Epsom Salt per gallon of water and if anything, the failed peppers and infested tomatoes look worse today. Any suggestions to save our crops this year? The squash are too far gone with millions of white fly and borers. The squash crop will be removed and burned tomorrow. It's impossible to get the sprays under all the many thousands of leaves. Suggestions anyone... other than to torch the three entire gardens.

[Omelet]

Try Tobacco tea.

Worked for mom for aphids.

Soak some cigarettes in water.

Too bad you can't find and dump a bunch of ladybug larvae... IME, natural predators work better than any pesticides if you can introduce them in great enough numbers.

I bought lacewing eggs to control scale on my succulents. Have not seen a scale since. :-)

[Billy]

I haven't used this but the caution was that it is a wide range general insecticide which is also toxic to mammals. If the nicotine in one cigarette could get into your body, you would be dead.

Nicotine and Soap Wash.

This is for Aphids, Apple Sucker, Cuckoo Spit, Leaf Miners, and all forms of young Caterpillars.

Nicotine (96 per cent purity)??. 1 ? - 2 ? oz. Soft Soap?????????... 4 oz. Soft Water?????????. 20 Gals.

Pour the Nicotine into the dissolved soap in the water, and apply as a fine spray,

BUT

avoid using it on any plants the leaves of which are likely to be cooked or eaten in less than four or five weeks. The same remark applies to fruit.

[Isabella Woodhouse]

While we don't usually have this happen in the gardens, I keep some plants on my deck and they have a tendency to get whitefly when it is especially hot and dry. To forestall this, I spray the foliage every day with the hose after the late-afternoon watering, paying special attention to the undersides of the leaves. That works about 70% of the time for me. When it doesn't, I use those sticky yellow traps (like cardboard) and those catch gazillions of whiteflies and aphids. However, you need to situate them so that the birds cannot sit atop them and get stuck. I think there are pheromones for them as well.

I can really identify with your squash problems. Those squash vine borers are really horrible. I can't tell you how many times my DH has had to do "surgery" on the vines in the past to save them. This year, for the first time, we put row covers over the zucchini (four different cultivars) and they are all producing and doing well. I go out early every morning and hand-pollinate the female flowers with a little brush. This is not at all difficult with squash flowers. We've never, ever had summer squash this nice before. We use the lightest weight 8 foot wide Agribond (like cloth not plastic) over a make-do lashed wood frame. We started with tensile steel hoops but the plants were much to large and vigorous for them. Our beds are 4 feet wide and we're smack dab in the middle of the country.

We're going to use row covers on some fall crops as well, both to keep out pests and extend the season. Best thing since sliced bread.

Isabella

[Marie Dodge]

We're not rich enough to buy the numbers we would need to control this whietfly and mite invasion. Also, it's well known here the ladybugs and other beneficial insects/bugs don't hang around. In 48 hours they're gone and you're back where you started but with a lighter wallet.

[Marie Dodge]

What does SSSSSSSSS mean? I'll get some ciggies from my husband and soak them. I spent so much on this garden already I hesitate to toss good money after bad.

This is our tomatoes and peppers. In a month the toms will be rotten on the ground if I can't can them in the next few weeks.

[Marie Dodge]

The cost of trying to grow some of our own food is more costly than we'd pay at the store we're finding. What did these row covers cost you if I may be so bold?

[Omelet]

Good caution. :-) As far as I know, mom only ever used it on Roses...

[Omelet]

Wow, I'll have to try that! I'd given up on growing squash long ago because of the borers...

[Omelet]

Note I said "larvae". ;-) Those can't fly.

I collected a couple of hundred ladybugs a few years ago in the parkinglot at work one night. They were all over the cars near a street lamp! Guess it was a migration of some sort.

Brought them home and have had a lot of baby ones around ever since. Guess they laid their eggs before leaving. :-)

[Isabella Woodhouse]

We only had a 50' long piece that my husband said he bought two years ago and just now got around to trying. He said it was reasonable but does not recall the price. The product is reusable unless it gets torn up by hail or deer I guess. He asked me to order more for the fall so I've just started looking at prices. Johnny's has Agribon in different weights (sorry I misspelled it in my other post). The lightweight insect barrier is 118" x 250' for $51. It looks like lightweight non-woven interfacing for sewing. It lets in the light and the rain, though the heavier stuff for cold weather does block more light. No doubt others have it too and there are other brands.

I don't think anything can guarantee that you'll never see a bad pest like the SVB again but, for us, we finally have a really nice crop without extraordinary effort. The pests may eventually find them, who knows? But I've already had a better crop by the end of July than I had in any previous entire season. And best of all, no spraying whatsoever. I did have to let out a bumblebee today that must have gone in there when I was pollinating them earlier. I told him there were plenty of other flowers for him to visit other than the squash. ;) We use ground staples, rocks and old broken pots to hold down the fabric. And in places where I needed to join fabric pieces (his test size was not quite wide enough), I used my quilting gun that shoots tiny little plastic ties (I use those instead of safety pins for my quilts).

Isabella

[Billy]

So you'd rather pay a lower price to suck down pesticide residues? Just no accounting for some peoples taste.

[Charlie]

Charlie

"The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages." ~Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, États et empires de la lune, 1656

[Mike]

I found Sevin liquid concentrate 1 tablespoon per quart of water in a spray bottle works OK. The spray leaves a chalky residue on the leaves that dissipates in a couple of weeks.

I'm real keen now on how to identify, locate, search and destroy crop infesting parasites. For instance I found a small worn camping out in a corn silk that would eventually turn into a big ugly.

The first clue was some small tender leaves that had been chewed.

[Omelet]

Hit the local Farmers Markets. Ours is every Tuesday.

[Marie Dodge]

Wish I could find some free insects that eat spidermites and whitefly and their larvae. Tomorrow I'm going to hit them with Need Oil and a dab of soap again.

[Marie Dodge]

Thank you. It's something for us to consider for next year. SVB are so bad here most of the gardeners we know gave up on summer squash long ago.

[Marie Dodge]

And just how are you avoiding sucking down pesticide residues with the things you do buy in the store? Or do you buy nothing edible in the stores? Are you saying you filter all your water and grow every bite of food you eat? You raise your own pesticide free grain to bake your own bread? Do you raise your own livestock and how do you feed them without them sucking down pesticide residues from the commercial feeds which is transported into their meat? What are you feeding your hens for 100% pesticide free eggs and meat? Or your hogs and beef cattle? And knowing there are toxic chemicals in furniture and carpets these days... are all your furnishings wood you grew yourself to make sure it's pesticide and preservative free? If no to any of these questions then you are both absorbing toxic chemicals as well as sucking them in every day. Get off your high horse.

[Marie Dodge]

Not everyone has a farmer's market close by. Ours is at least 30 miles away. A 60 mi round trip and we learned that many of the so called "farmers" are nothing but people buying from the big wholesalers and re-selling it at the FMs. It's no telling where the produce originated. Also, there is no way to know what chemicals the original farmers used on the crops.

[Marie Dodge]

Sounds like corn ear worm, another very common garden pest where I live. If you beat the CEWs, the coons, crows and deer get the corn. :-)