General purpose insecticide?

Is there an effective general purpose insecticide, fungicide, miticide that will get most of those rascals out there? It is troublesome to spray for all those critters separately. I am pretty sure I've got them all.

Anything close?

Reply to
Walter R.
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Bad idea. Without insects, you wouldn't get any fruit, squash, peppers, cucumbers, etc. (Tomatoes and corn are wind pollinated.) The bees in this country have enough problems with natural predators without having to worry about people spraying their space indiscriminately.

Some fungi protect plants against other diseases. There are predatory mites that protect plants against other insects.

A much better approach would be to understand what is going on in your garden. When you have a problem, address that problem specifically and in such a way as not to generate more problems.

To answer your specific questi> Is there an effective general purpose insecticide, fungicide, miticide that

Reply to
dps

if you dont know what you have or if you have it, then no. there is no "general insecticide" because different insects require different control. It dosent make sense to spray for mites unless you have them, since you will harm the beneficial mites. "im pretty sure ive got them all" isnt a good argument, you need to know what the problem is. The doctor wouldnt give you a general medicine and say, well, you could have the flu, or maybe a cold, or maybe pnuemonia, but this will take care of whatever you have would they? This is why you cant buy very many chemicals anymore, homeowners who have no idea what they are doing just spray everything they can get thier hands on with little understanding of what they are actually doing. On a final note, we only have one earth, spraying mass amounts of chemicals will not help to preserve it.

Toad

Reply to
Marley1372

HAH!

Reply to
lgb

That is an intensely stupid idea. You have no business gardening.

Reply to
Doug Kanter

Your invective has no purpose in this or any newsgroup. It does not help anyone and makes you look bad.

Doug Kanter wrote:

Reply to
Stubby

Anyone older than 15 who is not aware of the dangers of pesticides should not be allowed to leave their bedroom. Ever.

Reply to
Doug Kanter

Yes what. Not including any part of the original post makes your reply useless.

Reply to
Travis

As we all know, Doug has always been a expert gardner. He has never been a neophyte and has never made any mistakes and has never had any questions. Anyone who cannot meet these standards is not welcome in his world.

Betty

Reply to
Betty Harris

Not including any of the original post in your reply kinda makes your post useless.

Reply to
Travis

I think he said that the best general purpose insecticide is the thumb & index finger.

-paghat the ratgirl

Reply to
paghat

Anyone older than 15 who is not aware of the dangers of pesticides should not be allowed to leave their bedroom. Ever.

What arrogance! Maybe he should apply as a guard at Guantanamo Bay or any other concentration camp.

Walter

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Reply to
Walter R.

I bet he meant to say "should not be allowed to leave their bedroom ever without their thumb & an index finger."

Unless he meant "should be locked in their bedroom while the whole house is tented & gassed for termites."

A snotty jest on UseNet comparable to ignoring the Geneva Convention for treatment of prisoners of war? That's the dumbest thing I've read since some dumbass vegan posted that eating hamburgers is comparable to snuffing Jews.

-paggers

Reply to
paghat

He or she probably meant that eating hamburgers is like eating what's left of:

Jimmy Hoffa

-- Jim Carlock Please post replies to newsgroup.

Reply to
Jim Carlock

Now that we have heard from all the 'organics', lets hear the other side of the story.

There are certain insect pests that cannot be effectively controlled with organic methods. I know because I have been growing fruit for over 20 years and have tried all the organic sprays and controls. I still utilize a combination of organic methods, like trapping insects on sticky balls and dormant oil. I have yet to find an organic method to effectively control apple maggot, for starters. Like any other technique, spraying can be done correctly, or not. You should not spray insecticide (fungicide is ok) when your trees are in blossom. That indeed will kill any bees around. You should not locate your trees near your vegetable garden. You should spray on near windless days, so that it stays confined to your orchard area. You should wear protective gear, including breathing masks, and not spray when kids or pets are around. This all makes it sound a bit dangerous, but so is getting on the freeway with all the idiot drivers. If you want the majority of your fruit to be clean, you probably have to spray in your location, especially since you have already noticed what sounds like heavy insect damage.

I would recommend a general orchard spray (Bonide makes one, for example). It contains a combination of insecticides and fungicides. These types of sprays are meant to cover most orchard problems, but if you have a more serious situation, you may have to go to a specific spray which targets it. Try the orchard spray first, and then see how it goes.

You may have had a better reception if you had gone to rec.gardens.edible, where there seems to be more people growing fruit.

Good Luck,

Sherw> Is there an effective general purpose insecticide, fungicide, miticide that

Reply to
sherwindu

Actually, Betty, I have made enough mistakes to fill a book. I know what I don't know, I know when I need advice, and I *do* ask questions. But, since

1970 or so, when I began gardening, all anyone needed to do was open a newspaper 20 times a year to notice that there are serious problems with pesticides, and that their presence on the store shelves is absolutely no indication that they are safe. Further, to ask about "how to kill ALL bugs" indicates a level of ignorance that's truly surprising in this day and age.
Reply to
Doug Kanter

This is all reasonable advice, but realize this:

You're giving it to someone who is completely in the dark, and not just with regard to gardening. So, it's important to point out garden chemicals have not been and can never be correctly tested for safety. I'm sure you're aware of that.

Reply to
Doug Kanter

Nonsense. If the material is used in strict compliance to the instructions on the label (and it should not be used in any other way) safety is assured. Those instructions include dosages, personal protective equipment requirements and minimum re-entry intervals.

I will add another pest that cannot be controlled by organic methods nor by unrestricted pesticides such as the Bonide Fruit Tree Spray. That is the plum curculio which attacks not only plums, but also apples, pears, peaches and nectarines.

Unrestricted pesticides used to contain a control for plum curculio but that was removed from the formulae two years ago. The unlicensed homeowner has no effective remedy for plum curculio, at least in my state of New Hampshire.

That is one of the reasons I got an applicator's permit this year. Imidan is an effective control for plum curculio but it is a restricted product.

JMHO

John

Reply to
John Bachman

1) Use the pharmaceutical analogy. The only way to assure the safety of a new drug is to test it on the target population, and even then, long term effects can only be determined by waiting and seeing. Yard chemicals cannot be tested in this way, at least not within the morals of this society. The chemical companies themselves say that animal testing is irrelevant. Since they cannot be tested on people, safety cannot be determined.

Note: Somewhere on the web, there *is* mention of one round of tests in which an agricultural chemical

2) In the early 1970s, the chemical industry purchased legislation which exempted a long list of so-called "inert ingredients" from what little testing is done to begin with.
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This is a summary for the layman, but with cites. This link will provide you with more than enough other information to keep you busy for awhile:
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"inert" ingredients include quite a few things which are known, beyond dispute, to be harmful to humans in some way. Toluene, for instance.

I'm not disputing what you say, in terms of what works on which pests, but I do think it's irresponsible to suggest the use of ANY chemical to a person who has not demonstrated the least bit of knowledge in terms of which bugs he's trying to deal with. That, to me, is a prerequisite, and a crucial one.

Reply to
Doug Kanter

The best method of apple maggot control is the use visual traps for the adult flies before they lay their eggs, ADDING a natural host odor with the trap [Rull et al, Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, January

2005 -- note the date, it is very recent research that has shown the effectiveness of non-sparying techniques].

While it has become a cliche that no organic spray is half as effective as highly toxic organophosphate type pesticides, it is now well established that methods other than spraying can be completely effective. Because crop value is higher for organic crops, there is no net gain by using potent toxins [Reissig, Journal of Economic Entomology, Oct 2003].

Once a grower realizes spraying is not the best or primary method (organic or otherwise) comparisons of organic vs non-organic spraying becomes moot. But fact is, the 2001-2002 Cornell study headed by Terence Robinson of organic apple techniques (tested in New York & Ontario) discovered control of apple maggot with organically approved Surround was completely effective. So the popular cliche that only harmful organophosphate insecticides work is now conclusively known to be false.

Comparative analysis in Quebec conducted over a ten year period found that completely unsprayed apple orchards had infestation rates ranging from 0 to 4.1% [Vincent & Mailloux, Annales de la Societe Entomolique de France,

1988; Vincent & Roy, Acta Entomologica et Phytopathologica Hungarica, 1992]. Unless losses exceed 5% it is counterproductive & unnecessary to even consider chemical spraying. Any gains from using toxins are more than offset by the extra costs of chemicals plus the lowered value of non-organic crops.

If apples were not permitted to rot on the ground, the orchard would not have any apple maggot pupae overwintering in the soil, & the only threat of infestation is from adult flies coming from outside the orchard. Often removal of elderly apple trees & hawthorns from surrounding properties is the only control required. In all cases, by the time eggs are laid, the maggots are impervious to toxins; so stopping the adult flies at the periphery becomes the goal. Even growers who do use pesticides often use them exclusively OFF the periphery of the orchards & NOT on the trees themselves [Thimble & Solmae in Crop Protection, 1997] since a clean orchard has no emerging flies inside the periphery. Others who use insecticides do so only in the scent-baited sticky-traps again to keep poisons off the crop.

The milestone research of the late Ron Prokopy (who died last year) with even just unscented traps triggered a revolution in organic apple growing that left the chemical-dependent growers in the pesticidal dust. Chemical dependency bred chemical dependency, & here in Washington as the chemical-dependent growers went bankrupt one after another, organic growers flourish. The more recent (even just within the last four years) scent-baiting of the Prokopy traps has has made trap strategies so extremely effective that organic apple growers have either fewer or no more losses than lazier less knowledgeable growers who spray & thus produce a less valuable harvest. Effectiveness of Prokopy sticky traps PLUS host scent is today the preferred method of apple maggot control, preserving the added value of organic crops.

The big reason some orchards would still spray today is because they are producing pig-feed apples & it is too labor intensive both to maintain bait-scented traps & to clean up fallen apples, when in any case the crop will remain poorly valued.

In Washington state the primary threat to fully organic apple orchards are infestations bleeding over from trees grown in the back yards of homeowners who do not know to control apple maggot with scented stickytraps, & who let fallen apples remain on the ground so that the next year's infestation developes. Sponsored programs to involve morons, I mean backyard amateurs, in the use of scented traps, even providing the traps for free, & educating the amateurs on the necessity of immediately cleaning apples off the ground before the worms crawl into the ground to pupate, is far more effective than trundling out increasing numbers of increasingly toxic chemicals & pretending there is no way around them -- though certainly the chemical industry's propoganda encourages that misguided belief. Only the chemical companies themselves continue promulgate the so-called "integrated" system of traps plus toxic spraying.

-paghat the ratgirl

any bees around.

getting on the freeway

rec.gardens.edible, where there

Reply to
paghat

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