Which pesticide to use depends on which pest you have and what stage of development that pest is in. Spraying a disease (BT) that is effective at an early stage in a leaf eating insects life on a plant to control a boring insect is a waste ot your time, energy, and money. Spraying a contact poison, meant to kill an insect on contact, on a plant with the target inside the fruit where the poison will not reach is another waste of time, energy, and money. If you have a problem you need to understand what that problem is and if that problem really needs to be controlled, is the problem a really serious one or maybe just cosmetic or maybe is affecting only one of 100 fruits and can be left alone. Then you need to find the least toxic, and effective, means of control, what will do the job with the least damage to the environment. Apply that solution and then review what you did. If you have the larva of something eating leaves and they are at the stage of growth that the BTKs will work that is the least toxic and most effective thing to do, but BTK is not effective for some of the borers (and spraying onto the plant will not allow this stuff to reach the target) nor is it effective in later development stages.

By the way, 12 cedar trees from BB HD a year earlier also turned brown and died. ==>>> so if i understand correctly... EVERYTHING you have bought.. from bigboxstore has died.. or is dieing... and you want us to tell you why?? am i with you so far???? well... wait for it... its because you are buying carp stock from a freakin hardware store.... buy quality stock.. and avoid these problems... you cant turn a bad plant.. into a good plant with fertilizer.. good soil... or anything else ... just stop buying bad plants... especially end of the year bargains .... this is a case of trying to make a bargain work... and with trees.. it doenst work all the time.... mail order some quality stock from some place like conifer kingdom... or any local SPECIALTY conifer nursery .... and 99% of your problems will be solved [. this will not help the one planted 6 inches from a wheel-less car.. next to an 8 foot wall ... well it looks like a cinder block there ...] and with your desire.. and limited space.. you need to look for mini conifers... so you can collect a few .... and use very little ground .... below is a pic of 15 or so mostly mini conifers around my patio .... i admit i screwed up on putting a few small dwarfs there .. but one thing for sure.. you wont find these at the hardware store.... ken

"Are BSF timid creatures, or am I most likely going to have them crawling on me or flying around when I'm checking out my bin?" Some people really love their BSFL, as much as we love our worms. They too worry about them when they have to leave them for a few days. My understanding is that when BSFL are about 3/4 inch long and smaller they are white. Then as they mature they turn black and hard like little armadillos. Then they hide. The flys that emerge are like large houseflies but they do not land on poop and then on food. They avoid people, poop and food and want to find a bit of rot to lay their eggs on. They fly erratically. Slow when they are just warming up. Then faster. They are black with some of their leg area white. I think you would like the fly and the mature larvae and not be afraid of them. The thing that is cool about the white larvae is if one puts lets say the remains of a fish that the fillets have been harvest from into the bin, the the BSFL boil over the remains so actively that the remains float over the top of the activity and wonder around the container while getting smaller and smaller until they are all gone. Maybe let your helper know that these types of things in the bin are normal so they will not be startled. There is the cutest youtube that shows a little girl with a handful of BSFL feeding then to her chickens. If they knew that even little girls are not afraid of them then they might be more ok with them. Me I do not even touch my worms except with a 10 inch stick. Not even with gloves on. Maybe the scarriest thing to ever happen was I had noticed a few things out of place around the bin lately. Things were a bit mess with the vermicomost. I thought I was just sloppy. One day I put food in the top of the bin and out of the bottom a mouse jumped and darted off of my leg. I screamed like a little girl. Then I laughed a lot because I screamed. Many people love furry mice as pets. Maybe not me. I wonder if he was eating my worms. I move the material around in my bin to learn what is going on. As I am more confident I know what is happening in there and as vermicomposting is not my newest hobby, and I am not possessed with knowing what is going on with the little guys, I am more likely to leave them alone. Then my activity with the bin would more resemble how sbryce advises. Like him I would flip the bottom material over for the same reasons. Or gain interest in flow through bins like I have. I would think the cloth worm inns would work nice for you. Just put the stuff food by the tons and bedding in at the top. Zip it in. Water frequently. Harvest at the bottom. Supposedly no need to separate worms. They do dry out fast but the activity of adding water is pleasant for some. Others may have fish tank change water they want to use. I would think that maybe the condition of the material might be gauged a tiny bit by just squeezing the bag. I do not have one. Some people sew their own. Having a strong enough stand to hold mega weight is important. I guess like not buying the first year of a car I am waiting for them to come out with the new and improved version. I think mine would dry out. That would be ... ... .,. very bad for the worms. A homemade plastic bin is more resilient in that way.

I started my worm farming with a WF 5 yrs, ago. Big expense and big mistake; I shoukd have done a DIY bin and spend the money on worms instead. My experience with WF, it is just too small and very poor air circulation if you use it just the way the manual said. I never used the provided lid; used burlap instead covering the entire unit. I didn't nestled the trays the way they were supposed to. I used 2 tall pill bottles in the front corner. The height of the bottles are about 1/4" - 3/8" below the top rim of the tray. The front side of the next tray up sat on the pill bottles and the back was sitting on the ledge/lip of the tray below it. With the 3rd working tray, the front was sitting on the ledge and the back on the pill bottles etc, etc. This provided the needed air circulation. OR, you could just put the trays angled, resting on the ledge instead of nestled into the one below it. I was aiming to have extra liquid to be on 1 side of the tray so the worms could be on wetter or dryer ground. I can tell you that I didn't get leachete since I did it this way. Before that, it's either too dry or leachete. Also, my thinking is, for air to circulate, there must be room for air in the first place. I kept the WF for only about 1 year and moved on to stackable RM bins and a FT. BTW, how many lbs. of worms did you start with? Seems to me you are feeding too much. Did you notice the ammonia smell on the wheat grass? UCG takes longer to break down and generates a lot of heat. At feeding time, how much did you see of the previous feeding? I have fed my worms many times molded stuff and I didn't notice anything that went wrong. White mold, blue mold, grey mold, long hair mold, compact mold, you name it. I even added molded oranges and it went fine.