Have you tried to use milky spore for the jap beetles in the lawn?
For the twenty bucks or so for a decent size container of the spore and
spread it "farmer style"(by hand broadcasting )in a part of the lawn that is
near yhour raspberrys/grapes I know you will see a differnece next summer.
I know the stuff works as beetles would be a black fog on my lawn.Now we
have very very few of them.And I have farm fields on three sides of me.
"Jerome R. Long" wrote in message
...
Organic purists will blanch at this entry....sorry.
In my climate/location adjacent to a 500 acre pasture on a hill in
Southwest
Virginia I find gardening by strict organic rules to be a non-starter
although
I have much sympathy for organic purism and have subscribed to OG for 37
years.
The topic I wish to broach is judicious use of Bayer's Merit 75
imidacloprid
insecticide on fruit and vegetable crops.
For first rate information see the following Cornell U. site


http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles...athion/imidacl
oprid-ext.html
and also the Bayer site

http://intranet.risd.edu/envirohealt...rMerit75WP.pdf

Imidacloprid is a systemic insecticide found to be a godsend in control of
such things as the Japanese beetle grub in turfgrasses as well as the
adult
beetle infestations of ornamentals such as roses. I have been using it on
my
60 hybrid tea roses for about four years. Imidacloprid is certified for
use
on turf grasses and ornamentals. It is not certified for use on food crops
as
far as I can tell.
However one finds in the Cornell site the following:
Imidacloprid is a systemic, chloro-nicotinyl insecticide with soil, seed
and
foliar uses for the control of sucking insects including rice hoppers,
aphids,
thrips, whiteflies, termites, turf insects, soil insects and some beetles.
It
is most commonly used on rice, cereal, maize, potatoes, vegetables, sugar
beets, fruit, cotton, hops and turf, and is especially systemic when used
as a
seed or soil treatment. The chemical works by interfering with the
transmission
of stimuli in the insect nervous system. Specifically, it causes a
blockage in
a type of neuronal pathway (nicotinergic) that is more abundant in insects
than
in warm-blooded animals (making the chemical selectively more toxic to
insects
than warm-blooded animals). This blockage leads to the accumulation of
acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter, resulting in the insect's
paralysis, and eventually death. It is effective on contact and via
stomach
action (3).

While I have used Merit 75 imidacloprid to control the Japanese beetle on
my
roses, the horrible beasts have continued to ravage my raspberries and my
grapes.
A bit of simple math shows it may be OK to use Merit 75 on those grapes
and
raspberries.
One of the first things one learns in using Merit 75 is how very little is
needed for control. Merit 75 comes as a water soluble powder in a 2 oz
bottle
used at the rate of 1/8 tsp per gallon of water. This works out to be
roughly
one gram of imidacloprid in three gallons of water. A generous spraying of
a
half gallon mixture on a 30 foot long row of five foot high raspberries
then
works out to be no more than 100 mg imidacloprid on the entire row of
plants.
The imidacloprid is absorbed systemically so that all parts of the plant
become
most effectively toxic to the Japanese beetles.
But the raspberry output for an excellent crop producing 10 to 15 gallons
of
berries is at most some 2% by mass of the plants. In the very worst case,
this
implies a residual of 0.2 mg imidacloprid per gallon of berries, with the
chances being that there is less than 0.1 mg per gallon.
Thus, we might expect a glutinous consumption of a full gallon of berries
so treated might involve also ingesting about 0.1 mg imidacloprid.
In tests on rats it is found that half the rats are fatally dosed (LD50)
if
they ingest 450 mg per killogram of body mass. Translated to a 75 kg (165
lb)
person, the tests on rats suggest a 50% killing dose of 34,000 mg.
Thus, to ingest a gallon of red raspberries from plants previously treated
with
a generous spraying of Merit 75 suggests one has ingested about 0.0003 %
of
an LD50 dose...at most. Similar numbers would apply to grapes.
One further learns (Cornell site) that "Imidacloprid is a systemic,
chloro-nicotinyl insecticide with soil, seed and foliar uses for the
control of
sucking insects including rice hoppers, aphids, thrips, whiteflies,
termites,
turf insects, soil insects and some beetles. It is most commonly used on
rice,
cereal, maize, potatoes, vegetables, sugar beets, fruit, cotton, hops and
turf,
and is especially systemic when used as a seed or soil treatment. The
chemical
works by interfering with the transmission of stimuli in the insect
nervous
system. Specifically, it causes a blockage in a type of neuronal pathway
(nicotinergic) that is more abundant in insects than in warm-blooded
animals
(making the chemical selectively more toxic to insects than warm-blooded
animals). This blockage leads to the accumulation of acetylcholine, an
important neurotransmitter, resulting in the insect's paralysis, and
eventually
death. It is effective on contact and via stomach action (3).

The Cornell site also says:
Imidacloprid is quickly and almost completely absorbed from the
gastrointestinal tract, and eliminated via urine and feces (70-80% and
20-30%,
respectively, of the 96% of the parent compound administered within 48
hours).
and
The half-life of imidacloprid in soil is 48-190 days, depending on the
amount
of ground cover (it breaks down faster in soils with plant ground cover
than in
fallow soils) (9). Organic material aging may also affect the breakdown
rate of
imidacloprid. Plots treated with cow manure and allowed to age before
sowing
showed longer persistence of imidacloprid in soils than in plots where the
manure was more recently applied, and not allowed to age (10).
Imidacloprid is
degraded stepwise to the primary metabolite 6-chloronicotinic acid, which
eventually breaks down into carbon dioxide (11). There is generally not a
high
risk of groundwater contamination with imidacloprid if used as directed.

As another indication of the very low toxicity of imidacloprid to warm
blooded
animals, one should note that your vetinarian sells monthly use vials of
the stuff that you squeeze out on the spine of the dog. I don't know the
dose,
but it is sold in about four sizes that scale up with the weight of the
dog..
It is absorbed through the dog's skin and is death to any flea or tick
that
bites that dog. There do not appear to be any negative consequences. A one
year
feeding study on dogs fed a regular diet with 1.8 parts per thousand of
imidacloprid produced no observable effect. That gallon of raspberries
with its
0.1 mg of possible imidacloprid corresponds to about 0.00002 parts per
thousand
for that one item,whereas the dogs were fed at the rate 1.8 parts per
thousand
on a day in day out basis for a full year.

SO I SAY TO YOU, WHY NOT VERY JUDICIOUSLY USE THIS stuffto prevent our
grapes
and raspberries from being converted to brown lace.