Diatomaceous Earth is a natural, effective, and safe insect control. Good for your pets for ticks, and fleas, drive them from your lawn, garden, orchard, and household. Diatomaceous Earth gets rid of insects without the danger of chemicals. It works by dehydration. When an insect ventures into D.E. it absorbs their fluids. When an insect looses ten percent of their body fluids they die. D.E. is so safe that it is used by the USDA as an additive to grain for insect control. The D.E. does not have to be removed when the grain is ground into flour for human consumption because of its food grade rating. Perfect for keeping insects out of food stocks.

You need to where a mask when you apply to your plants.

If you want to avoid getting them in the first place, be sure you are using an organic fertilizer (I like corn meal) and spray the plants with diluted liquid seaweed every 2 weeks.

Be careful with Diatomaceous Earth-- it kills all soft-bodied insects, bad and good. And you need all the beneficials you can get. It has the same effect on the insect community as DDT. I only use DE selectively, for slug control around the very special plants. It can be applied in a ring around the plant, forcing slugs and snails to cross the deadly barrier to get to the munchies.

Sometimes a duster is used for the organic-approved pesticides Rotenone and Pyrethin. But I wouldn't recommend using a duster at all. For one, you can apply less product if it diluted/suspended in water and sprayed on. This is less wasteful of the material and less toxic to the environment. As well, a spray is less likely to be accidentally inhaled or ingested. Organic-approved pesticides are still poisons!

Some people say that a duster allows them to coat the undersides of leaves, which is difficult to do with a trigger-style pump sprayer. But if you use a pressurized sprayer (and these are available in small-garden sizes) you can spray upside down and all around.

D.E has the same effect on the insect community as DDT??? I don't think so. That's a bit extreme.

Do you realize that DDT is the only sure way to destroy and control malaria? Amazingly, it does serve a useful purpose.

Rotenone is no longer acceptable as an organic pesticide because of its adverse affects on aquatic life. Pyrethrins are a last resort pesticde, to be used only when all else has failed.
Strong, healthy plants are the best first line of defense and floating row covers and heavy mulches will also help. Attracting numerous beneficial insects helps too and that also means not using dusts and sprays, such as pyrethrins, that will also kill them. Solid collars around the plants will aid in keeping the SVB from laying eggs in the soil near the plants. Learn about the life cycle of these buggers around you and plant so that you help disrupt the life cycle.

The last time I checked, the organic certifiers around here were still allowing Rotenone, but only under certain conditions. I agree that it shouldn't be used around ponds or lakes, or any time when runoff is a concern.

Rotenone and Pyrethins are "big guns", and most garden pest situations need just a little gun (a squirt of soapy water, for example). You're right about the prevention part. Healthy plants can defend themselves.

Organic gardening is, sadly, not immune from the societal desire to be "saved by technology"-- people want products to fix the problem. They overlook cultivation techniques (life cycle disruption), physical controls (row covers, hand-picking), and natural assistance through beneficials and "trap" crops.

I don't think we can change the mindset of most gardeners from spray-and-pray to holistic understanding. The consumer culture is nearly inextricable from the life in the West. Most gardeners would rather BUY the perfect home landscape than work for it.

IMO, the best way to minimize the harm being done to ecosystems is for organic marketers to promote alternative products-- things like Rotenone and Pyrethins-- that are more benign than the typical garden-centre arsenal of poisons. This way, the average suburban gardener (who has neither the time nor the inclination to learn about the stuff that is second nature to most of us on this forum) will become less destructive. Joe Homeowner can switch products (or service providers) far more easily than he can learn a whole new set of behaviours.

At the same time we need to reduce the selection of poisons on the shelves. We need to legislate for changes to regulatory agencies that fast-track the latest bio-cides to market, that ignore impartial research that questions the safety of approved products, that seek to water down organic standards. If we manage a few wins on the consumer front, the industrial/commercial use of pesticides may turn as well.

I am cynical, though. I had an argument on another forum with some very nice ladies who insisted that their democratic right to save a nickle on garden supplies at Sprawl-Mart far outweighed the huge environmental and social costs. The need to buy our way out of trouble (even the environmental kind) is deeply ingrained. Can wisdom and reason win against greed and materialism?

Hmmm.

If organic growers keep compromising about what is organic gardening and what can be used then there will be no distiction between an organic garden and a "coventional" garden. If a person wishes to use organic maethods then they need to learn what those are, because there are no shortcuts.

Surround, which is just kaolin clay. Spray/dust it onto plants, and insects that like to eat leaves will get a mouth full of dirt first and be discouraged. You can spray/dust Surround on fruit, vegetables, trees, etc.

Catherine

In Canada, the distributor has listed Surround as a "classified" pesticide-- mainly because the company deals exclusively in heavy-duty chems and doesn't realize (or care) that kaolin clay is in a completely different category. They want one-size to fit all.

The classification makes it impossible to buy kaolin clay in Canada unless you have a pesticide applicator's licence, or you own a commercial orchard, or you're a "certified" retailer. Also precludes getting the stuff by mail order. It's a really dumb situation, and there's no reason for it to be so.

re: kimmsr's comment on compromising organic standards. I don't advocate for compromise at all. I think standards should be defended-- as best we can against the deep pockets the big players that are buying up and consolidating organic producers.

What I DO advocate is a products and marketing geared to the average, busy, shortcut-loving suburbanite who simply will not do the work, no matter how many pamphlets and web sites are available. Most people are lazy. We need to make these people want to BUY organic from producers and service providers who DO have the knowledge and WILL do the work. Just as we have armies of "trained" lawn spray operators systematically poisoning lawns from spring through fall, I hope that someday we'll have armies of specially trained organic gardeners caring for them.

Changing our nations' fetish with turfgrass monoculture-- well that's another question.