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Louisiana & Mississippi

caterpillars and moisture loving plants

18 years ago

I have either slugs or caterpillars gnawing up my angel trumpet and cannas. I've heard about the beer for the slugs, but what's something to use for the caterpillars? HELP!!! They look awful.

Also, I have a flowerbed which gets dappled sunlight throughout the day, but it has A LOT of moisture there. It seems like everything that I plant there dies. I'm assuming it's because of the moisture. Does anyone have suggestions as to what I can plant preferably either just greenery or a white flowering plant. The bed has a white theme. Thanks for any suggestions. Oh by the way, I also need a low growing flower to plant around a water fountain in that same flowerbed. The ground there is constantly moist. Again, any ideas?

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Comments (3)

bigoledude
18 years ago
If it's caterpillars "Thuricide" will kill all of them. Period!

If it's slugs or snails, sprinkling "diatomaceous earth" along the ground, under the plants that are under attack, will absolutely solve the problem. About every other year I get a major infestation of both snails and slugs.

DE is used in swimming pool filters as a filter media. It's a very fine white powder. If you look at it in a microscope, it is very very spiney with many very sharp edges.

As the pests crawl through the DE, it sticks to them and, (I believe) it slices them wherever it contacts them. I know this sounds crazy but, I don't really know whether it kills them or runs them off. An engineer friend of mine claims it kills them. I've never stayed awake to actually witness what the DE actually does to the pests. I just know I've NEVER had any more damage after DE application!

It amazes me how many people continue to have problems with snails and slugs when, they only need to visit their pool supply store for Diatomaceous Earth.
greenelbows1
18 years ago
DE is indeed excellent for snails and slugs, and I think what it does is cut them up so they lose moisture and dry up. I kinda hate to torture things to death, but slugs and snails don't keep me awake nights. You do have to re-apply the DE every time it rains.
As for Thuricide (and other forms of Bacillus thuringiensis) you might want to be careful where you apply it if you are trying to attract butterflies. I really had to laugh at myself when I planted parsley for the butterflies and then in horror started murdering the caterpillars that were devouring it. Managed to catch myself before I killed more than one or two, but I still regret those and wonder what on earth I thought I was doing! Once or twice I found a granulated Bt that was sold for corn earworms and was just right for those [censored] canna leafrollers--stayed put in the cannas so I didn't kill butterfly larva.
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Emeo2005, I am not familiar with that common name, either. But I would suggest that if you value your plant, you should remove some of those caterpillars! Caterpillars that damage plants in large numbers can be overpowering and the plant may find it difficult to recover. Unless you are in the business of growing butterflies or moths, I would collect some of those caterpillars and take some pressure off the plant! Leave a couple on there if you want to. If you can give us a better idea of what your plant is, we can help ID the caterpillar. Many tend to be host specific. taylorp, you have the oleander caterpillar on your Desert Rose.
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I have handled lots of heliconius larvae over the years, the julia [flame] caterpillars spines can make the skin look like it has lots of air bubbles on the surface, when you have handled lots of them in a short time, so far they are the only ones that have, in the butterfly house where i worked we had them strip many of the passiflora, but they prefer decaloba section to anything else, and the Austrailian ones get covered with eggs. So if you can grow decaloba in the US, that should help keep them off your fruiting plants. P. lutea would be very useful for this as the flowers are so small and it can cope in most colder areas. The gulf fritillary i dont know what sections it prefers, but probably can be transfered, i usually use xerogona hybrids, as food for most. It seems that what the fully grown larvae eats effects what the resulting females will lay on for the next generation, so you can over several generations get them naturally on these alternatives.
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sjpaddy
Original Author
18 years ago
Greenelbows,
Forgive me for sounding clueless, but what is granulated Bt? You said that this would help with the canna leafrollers? I have those too.

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