Marie Dodge wrote:

"zxcvbob" wrote in message
...
Marie Dodge wrote:

How are they an option when they are useless? Why use them at all
when plain water would do the same thing? Sounds like you can't get
past the idea that they didn't work. If they worked the insects
wouldn't have gotten out of hand now would they?

Sounds like you bought a bunch of expensive "organic" snake oil. No
wonder you are ****ed! The point is not that you need to buy organic
products, it's that you probably don't need to buy anything.

Right! The plants would have died faster and I would have saved some
money, better spent elsewhere. Meanwhile they would have been nurseries
for the breeding of resistant WFs and SPs to spread to nearby farms and
crops.

(But check out an insecticide called "BT". There are several
varieties and they are *targeted* to specific types of pests,
especially caterpillars)

What would I need something for caterpillars when the pests are spider
mites and white-fly? ??? What organic product kills these 2 resistant
pests? They've already wiped out one entire garden.


Bob



IIRC, horticultural oil will take care of both of those.

Insecticides do not work very well on spider mites because they are not
insects. Kelthane is a miticide that works OK, but I don't know if it's
on the market right now. It was taken off for a while because it
contained traces of DDT from the manufacturing process (maybe that's why
it worked so well), but I think it's back.

Wife's miniature roses had spider mites this year -- like every year. I
sprayed them with water (mites hate that), but what I did that really
helped was fertilized the plants. They were stressed because they were
nitrogen deficient. I mixed a generous pint of **** in enough water to
make 2 gallons (the capacity of the sprinkling can) and watered them
with that. Did that twice in one week. It must have been a little
strong because it burned a few of the leaves, but the plants took off
growing and once they were healthy the mites left. Don't tell my wife
that I peed on her roses. Later, I scratched a little superphosphate
into the soil.

I've been using the same "liquid fertilizer" sparingly in my vegetable
garden this year. It's a lot cheaper than fish emulsion, or even
10-10-10 for that matter.

I noticed today that the tomatoes need spraying with a fungicide. Gonna
do that tomorrow. One of the "brown bottle" chemicals, because I think
Bordeaux mixture (I have that too) will burn tomato plants.

Bob