"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 have those all the time too. And once I had one on a potted plant (milkweed) inside the pool enclosure, and a little bit later noticed a small, damselfly type insect there and the "seed" open. The insect was sitting almost like the BFs do when they are drying their wings, so I think he had just emerged from that. So that is my theory, as I did not actually see the thing emerge.

all labels also have a phone number on them.. and i have been known to call them directly.. and ask such questions ... a better question/post would be what are you fighting.. and how to go about killing that plague.. rather than all out nuclear war on a prophylactic manner ... on all things living in your yard ... surely you arent considering all of them at once?? though one day i did such.. i now dont act proactively.. but actually ID a problem.. and selectively go after it.. if ever ... there just arent that many things that require proactively .. IMHO ... ken

Well you begin by Googling 'common pests of tomatoes'. Then once you have your list you Google each pest individually and begin to learn about each of them. In the process of learning about each you'll discover how they reproduce, what their eggs, if any, look like, what their larvae and various instar stages look like, what their life cycle is and how many cycles they have per year in your area, what parts of the plant they attack, and lastly effective treatments for controlling them. You likely won't find all possibilities because as I said, insects are opportunists. They have their favorite crops but they will take advantage of tomatoes if their preferred crop isn't available. Dave