Well, some of them do have venomous bites, and if the common assassin bug in the US has a bite that's often described as "excruciating", I'm happy enough to call it venomous. It's certainly venomous to its prey! And yes, I forgot to mention that assassin bugs will stalk and eat beneficial insects as well -- you just don't know what will show up for its menu that day! They'll even eat their own siblings. Here is a link that might be useful: Killer Insects

"I planted Holy basil and regular basil this spring. The honeybees and several different bees, wasps and butterflies love it. Along with lots of green spiders. Unfortunately, I've only seen the green spiders eat beneficials." Thanks for mentioning the basil, it is another excellent bee plant for the vegetable garden. As for spiders... my observations mirror yours. Spiders are indiscriminate killers - and they are just as likely to kill beneficial insects as harmful ones. They are often listed as "beneficial", but I would rate them neutral at best. I've also had some nasty bites from spiders, and those bites heal slowly, so I don't have a great love for them. Fortunately, the wasp population in my property is very high - including mud daubers. Some of them hunt spiders, and do so very effectively... so the spider population in my garden is very low. Only those which spin webs at night & hide during the day escape the wasps, which suits me just fine. Never tried Murphy's Oil. I've used insecticidal soap, sometimes as part of the following recipe. It was contributed by Jimster several years ago, and is a great starting point for formulating your own insect sprays: INSECTICIDE: A U.S.D.A. formula combining oil and soap is effective in killing soft-bodied insects. Mix 1 cup peanut, safflower, corn, soybean, or sunflower oil with 1 tablespoon liquid dishwashing detergent. To make the spray, use 11/2 teaspoons of the oil-detergent mixture for each cup of water. As I mentioned above, I've tried several different variations of soap spray, sometimes with oil or alcohol. Since soap spray primarily works by blocking insect respiration, I even used sugar as an additive, when I was trying to kill cucumber beetles. Figured that would really clog their spiracles, and it seemed to help. Molasses might be even more effective, provided you can get it to dissolve. The advantage of using insecticidal soap (such as Safers) is that it is potassium based, and will cause less leaf damage. You can also use dish soap or baby shampoo, which is what I normally use. But in stronger concentrations (which may be required, depending upon what pest it will be applied to) there may be some leaf damage if the spray is allowed to remain on the leaves. Provided you are just targeting small areas, that is no big deal... but if spraying young plants, or covering a larger area (such as a squash bug infestation) then the spray should be washed off when it has done its work. Sucking insects die pretty quickly, you could rinse the leaves off after 15 minutes or so. For beetles, you just need to watch to see how effective the spray will be... it's possible a second spraying might be necessary. Beetle larvae are easier to kill than the adults, which can be remarkably resistant to soap spray... they will be temporarily paralyzed, but slowly recover. Cucumber beetles are a great example of this, they are pretty hard to kill. You really need full body coverage when spraying beetles, and a little alcohol in the mix will prevent them from flying away while you give them a good soaking. When trying out a soap spray the first time, observe its effect on the target insect. It's worth mentioning that while soap sprays have little to no no lingering toxic effect, they will kill most insects they are sprayed on. I've used the alcohol spray in my previous post to kill yellowjackets, it will knock them right out of the air. If bees or other beneficials get sprayed, it will kill them too.

I realize that this winter is extremely cold with very few days that are warm enough to place your plants outside for a few hours. However, a couple of weeks ago, I brought all my plants outside so that I could thoroughly clean the entire inside area. Outside, the plants were exposed to UV from the sun and wind that helped to remove many of the insects. Spraying with a hose helped as well. I am overwintering peppers that are infested with green aphids. Interestingly, some Asian ladybugs have taken up residence on the pepper plants and seem to be eating some of the aphids. I have heard that one ladybug can eat 200 aphids per day.

Hi, down here in Florida we seem to have some tough bugs. I never had any luck using Dipel or Thuricide. I ran some tests were I sprayed Thuricide on some cut off tomato leaves and put the leaves in a jar along with the caterpillars. (Note - on none of the test I ran did I spray or dust the caterpillars, just the cut leaves) Five days later the caterpillars were still alive. It did seem to slow them down some but not fully control them. I removed the treated leaves and one of the caterpillars fully recovered. I repeated the test using Dipel with the same results. On the last test I brought out the shot gun (Sevin) and had all the caterpillars dead within 24 hours. So now I only use the shot gun and I only spray just the sections of the plant that has a major infestation. If I see just a few larger caterpillars I will pick them by hand and smash them. Later, DC