serenasyh since you referenced my web site (OrchidsAmore) on the use of Vermi-Liquid I will expand it for you. I am a commercial grower and have used nothing but Vermi-Liquid in the greenhouse for the last two years. It has to be the liquid from the worm beds not the compost tea being sold as 'worm tea'. Vermi-Liquid is the proper name and it was sold as worm tea until worm farms started putting the compost in water to call it Tea. The compost is not effective against insects and it is only a weak fertilizer. I rarey see any insects on my palnts. We spray once a month and I have not had meally bugs or scale in the two years. It is very effective against thrips, but thrip eggs hatch every three days or so. You need to treat 3-4 times over a week to ten days to kill the newly hatching eggs. This is the same for most insects. Most people stop the treament too soon, and while they killed the insects they let the new generation hatch. Compost tea is a weak fetilizer but the Vermi-Liquid has a chemical in it called ceitanese. Ceitanese has only one characteristic in that it dissolves ceitain. It is harmless to us, but but ceitain is the skelton of an insect. To them it is fatal. There is a great deal of research on the web about the use of worm tea. But it is the liquid that is referenced not the compost. most of it is about the beneficial effects of foliar feeding with the liquid. The University of Ohio has several papers on its use for food crops. It is millions of microbes in the solution that are symbiotic with plants. It feeds the plants and reasearch has shown it helps retain 30% more moisture in the roots of the plants. The product is safe enough to drink, although, the thought of drinking worm ezcrement could make me sick. A customer's dog ate a 16 Oz bottle one day (plastic bottle and all) with no ill effects. It is very effective against black spot on roses. Effectively the ceitainese is like throwing acid on an insect. Large flying insect like aphids will leave the area. I had one spraying eliminate several thousand aphids on my roses. Poisons would take days to eliminate them but the irritation cause them to leave. It will dissolve scale on orchids in one treatment. Scrape a live scale off a plant and crush it with your fingernail. It is green inside. After Vermi-liquid the next day when you do it again and the scale is brown dust when crushed. This is a very simple test to see the results. It is the only thing we have ever found effective against the Asian Scale that attacks Sago Palms in Florida. For those not opposed to poisons, Bayer Ant Killer is extremely effective against thrips. Thrips are the bugs that suck the jouice out of flwoer buds, especially Dendrobium and Vanda. When the bud shrivels and dies without opening it is a sign of thrips. They are very hard to see without a magnifying glass The active ingredient is b-cyfluthrin. This is used in most commercial greenhouses as on ingredient of an insect spray. The nice thing about the Bayer is that is is a granular powder that can be applied directly to the potting medium. It then works as a slow release systemic poisen and you do not have to worry about reapplication. It is very effective against an active thrip attack. I do not find that the amount used was critical. We have used it on some highly infected plants in the gardens by sprinkling some of the granulars on the medium. I do not know how effective it might be against other insects.

For those of you that love this plant-WARNING! My mother’s house had an entire interior corner on her brick house filled with it. Due to a malfunctioning downspout, they were getting lots of water, and the roots advanced under the brick foundation and the slab. By the time I discovered the problem, the brick veneer on the house is settling ( the house is 60 years old, and we had never had this problem). A full repair would have cost about $9,000. We took part of the brick wall down to alleviate the weight, improved the drainage, and I dug up the entire root system, and got as much out from the slab as possible. We couldn’t afford a full repair. I now have the same problem on an outside corner where there is Nandina growing right up against the foundation (cracking brick, loose brick). I don’t even have a drainage problem there. Those red berries are pretty, but likely not worth the tens of thousands it may cost you in repairs. I am getting rid of every bit, to my mother’s dismay. Never grow this stuff near a foundation!

* Posted by cindy_john (My Page) on Tue, Apr 20, 10 at 10:49 I was so happy to have initially found this forum and hear from all of you, most have been so helpful and nice. However, I come back a few days later to update you all and see someone says I'm a troll and another tells me to move to a high rise building...how nasty is that! To those 2 or 3 people: please do not come to my garden on the days I am spraying, I will more than likely take one look at you and think you are nasty insects and take appropriate action. Wow, so everyone who doesn't agree with you using dangerous chemicals to "kill nasty bugs" is a nasty bug and should be elminated?! Nice!! And I stand by my high rise suggestion, anyone who wants to kill all bugs "because they are terrified of them" and has no concept of beneficials and no desire to learn, is a gardening menace.

Darn, I figured as much. Yes, there are only three that really matter. Two are around the property line and one is actually on a neighbor's lot. Not a big problem as we take care of their property for them anyway, and they aren't overly attached to the trees. We already told them one might need to come out because of a pole replacement, and also what the "hackers" had done and that it might lead to removal of more than one. However...because one definately isn't ours and the other two are marginal, I don't know that I want to put a lot of $$ into the spot if they do have to come out, since there's always the possibility that they could sell and the buyers would just remove whatever we planted anyway. Property lines out here can be a little fuzzy, and we have conflicting reports of exactly where ours is (by a few feet)-we don't have a fence or anything where it could be much of an issue outside of these trees. I might just toss a bunch of wildflower seed in if we have to remove them and leave it at that, and wait to see how big of an impact it would really make wind and noise wise.