I alternated spinosad and neem oil every 7-10 days starting in late spring. Still got plenty of damage. I think it was just too hard for me to get 100% coverage on bushy trees.with leaves twisting in every direction. Some advice I was given when purchasing the spinosad at Grangettos, a farm and garden supply store, was to pinch off the flushes of new growth instead of wasting time spraying. I didn't do it initially because my trees were too young and I wanted them to put on some size. Now I encourage new growth in the early spring by fertilizing more at that time. The new growth has enough time to harden off before the leaf miners show up. Then fertilize less in the summer and fall, pinching new growth off at that time. if you are sick of spraying for citrus leaf miner it is a possible alternative to consider. This post was edited by econ0003 on Mon, Apr 15, 13 at 1:53

Hi Christy, First of all I want to offer my sincerest condolences on your friends passing:( I know how difficult that can be. I lost a good friend my first year out of high school. He jumped off a peer in Lake Erie. He was under the influence of alcohol and drugs and another close friend of mine tried t osave him but he ended up smashing his face into the break wall and losing my friend. That morning theyfound him floating in the harbour. Okay, about your tree. I have a nice lush dwarf keylime tree. Of all places, I bought it from Roberta's on QVC. It was a small little whip of a tree but has since grown to be over 3 ft tall. It has loaded up plenty of times with flowers. My first complaint was that this tree was advertised as having a great scent. Logees greenhouse also sells it this way and there is NO detectable scent whatsoever! Anyhow, my buds would open and then right about the time the petals would start to drop, the whole flower would fall off! I did have the tiny ovary at the base of the flower but it never developed. I have had a few here and there that did hold on but always fell before they ever got any size to them. Mike also told me that even though citrus are supposed to be self fertile, it may need to be pollinated. I also know that there are some citrus that need cross pollinators to set fruit well. One of them is a citrus that I have been considering buying, the minneola tangelo. I read up on it and read some posts here on it and found that they don't have to have the cross pollinator but you may only get a couple fruits without one. Hi Toni, I wanted to tell youy that I will email you some pics of my two mango trees. Sadly, one of them is going to die but it was my fault. This is the mango I brought back from Florida and I didn't pay attention to the trunk of the tree like I should have. When I got it home, I realized that the bark was split in one spot but I was home and it was too late to do anything about it. I have learned a ton about these trees and though I have lost 3 in the past, I am confident enough to buy more and get some of my own fresh mangoes. mango and cherimoya are my favorite fruits. I did want your opinion on these HPS lights. Now, I have read that they are brighter than bright. Fine with me, as long as they are bright enough to support strong healthy growth. This HidHut website has some killer deals. I am going to order the 600 watt HPS. I am going to need to of them. I went a little crazy on buying fruit trees this year. I bought a 'Day' avoacdo, two different varieties of cherimoya, one actually is a double grafted tree with an atemoya also on it, 3 citrus trees, a mango tree, tons of cherimoya, sugar apple, passion fruit and guava seedlings. I have around 14 large trees so I am hoping that if I buy two of these 600 watt set ups, I can suspend the light above the trees with three trees on one side and 3 on the otherside, that way I can have six trees under each light. My seedlingsa are still small enough to fit on my table but I also ordered 3 cacti from K and L cactus. I have a jackfruit that is growing pretty quickly and my problem is like Christy. I have hardly any good quality natural light. Well, I hope all is well with you and I will email you soon. Mike, I also need to email you. I got some good news about some of the stresses I was talking about with you. I will be sending your package out to you next week. Wether the angel trumpet is ready to be cut or not. Did I mention that the same plant that bloomed once has about 8 buds on it? It should be blooming by the end of this week or maybe next week. I will email you pics when it is blooming so you can see what you will be getting. Andrew

Mick, I have mixed feelings about the use of Neem, but it is one of the more effective organic products available. It is OMRI-approved although I believe their guidelines define it as a tool in Integrated Pest Management programs which is to be used only after milder methods or rememdies have been tried without success. However, it can burn plant foliage if applied at temperatures above 90 degrees, so keep that in mind. And, in fact, here in our climate, I think Neem and some other foliar products (including insecticidal soaps and superfine horticultural oils) can burn at significantly lower temperatures--more like 80 degrees than 90 degrees. Neem is derived from the Neem tree, which is native to Burma and India and grows in many tropical areas. The Neem tree, by the way, is related to Chinaberry and Mahoghany. Extracts of the neem leaves and/or seeds are used as a natural pesticide. Some extracts from neem bark are used in some products as well. Neem is is antibacterial, a fungicide and a pesticide. However, it is NOT a systemic pesticide if used as a foliar spray. It IS a long-lasting systemic insecticide on pests located in soil if used as a soil drench. Neem is generally recognized as safe to mammals. It DOES NOT harm human beings, earthworms, butterflies, birds, plants, most beneficial insects or animals. Neem extract does not instantly kill pests. Instead, it works in more subtle ways. Insects absorb some compounds from Neem and those compounds block their endocrine system and disrupt their reproductive cycle. You will find that Neem works in different ways on different pests. In animals that molt and go through multiple instars, Neen represses the molting which therefore interrupts their growth cycle. In some insects, it suppresses feeding. With other insects, it does not kill them but does repel them. Neem is an effective control for loopers, leaf miners, weevils, psyllids, aphids, whiteflies, thrips, mealy bugs, gypsy moths, sawflies, hornworms, and webworms. Some people believe it is effective on squash bugs and cucumber beetles. Neem is sometimes effective against some foliar diseases (viral and bacterial) if sprayed on foliage. Some people use Neem a lot and swear by it. I don't. I have used it in the past, but the truth is that I'd just rather not use pesticides at all, and here is my reason why. In an organic garden, one of your MOST EFFECTIVE pest controls is beneficial insects. Those beneficials help keep bug populations under control by eating the "bad" bugs. If I spray Neem and kill off all the "bad" bugs, or even most of them, then my beneficial insects will either leave or die because their food source has been removed. Then, when bad bug populations resurge, I have no beneficial insects around to deal with them. So, I choose not to use Neem. When attempting to control insects, I rely most upon beneficial insects but also upon birds (domestic ones, and my chickens and guineas as well), bats, toads and frogs, and dragonflies. If a particular pest is giving me trouble, I try to find an organic remedy which targets that specific insect, like using Slug-Go or Slug-Go Plus for snails, slugs, pill bugs and sow bugs, for example. I sometimes use particular strains of Bt for whichever pest they target--Bt San Diego, for example, for Colorado Potato Beetles, or BT Israelensis for mosquito larvae. For grasshoppers, I use Nosema locuste, which targets only members of the grasshopper and locust families. Because Neem is known to kill over 200 kinds of insects, I don't like using it EXCEPT as a last result and I seldom get that desperate. I just consider it to be more of a broad-spectrum product than I am comfortable using. Believe me, I have nothing against Neem. I have even used shampoos and soaps containing tea tree oil (another name for neem) on my dogs. It just doesn't fit in with my garden philosophy of using as little pesticides in the garden as possible. To me, there is SO MUCH MORE to organic gardening than merely substituting an organic product for a chemical product. (There are many supposedly "safe" organic products that are just as toxic and dangerous as the supposedly more dangerous chemical ones.) To me, organic gardening is all about the garden being an entire ecosystem where various members of the ecosystem work to keep one another in balance to the extent that it is possible to do so. Having said that, though, there are some pests for which I have to "import" the ingredient needed to maintain the eco-balance, like releasing ladybugs or spraying a form of Bt. This year, the only pesticides I have used have been Slug-Go Plus to control the sowbugs and pillbugs and Nosema locuste to control the grasshoppers. I use Slug-Go and similar products every year, but I only use Nosema products about once every 3 or 4 years. I prefer to use lady bugs, green lacewings and other beneficials, but that is just me. Is there a specific pest you are wanting to target with the Neem? I am not trying to discourage you from using it by any means, but there may be a better treatment for whatever you're encountering. Dawn

Imelda, commercial orchardists in Florida (and in all citrus producing states), don't just rely on Imidacloprid. They use a series of various foliar and systemic insecticides to try to manage their orchards. The goal for commercial growers in Florida is to try to keep the trees alive a year or two longer than the average 5 year death rate. Right now, they are rotationally re-planting their orchards, and relying on several pesticides, as well as other measures (such as the one John mentioned - planting less desirable trees around the perimeter of their orchards) to try to stretch out their replacement rates due to death from HLB. The goal for our commercial growers here in California is to kill the psyllid prior to being able to feed on the tree, or incapacitate the psyllid to such a degree, that even if it does begin to feed, there isn't enough time for a potentially infected psyllid (I use the adverb, "potentially" to indicate that we do not have any infected psyllids discovered, yet in California) to inject their infected saliva back into the tree, and thus infect the tree.And, as Steve has pointed out, most certainly would not make it to tree #2, to spread the disease. Also, imidacloprid is a neonicotinoid, and one of the useful features of neonicotinoids is that they are anti-feedants, so psyllids don’t want to feed on trees treated with them. It causes the tree to naturally repel psyllids. Commercial growers have been recommended to apply imidacloprid systemically every 6 weeks, and then use various foliar pesticide applications in between that use different modes of action. Suzi, that is the philosophy behind integrated pest management - use the least harmful management option, first. Only resorting to more intense or toxic management options if the less harmful options are insufficient. You're doing the responsible thing. I was using Spinosad only to treat CLM, but now, I am compelled to also use Imidacloprid as well, since I have over 100 citrus trees on my property, and am adjacent to 157 acres of completely un-managed and abandoned citrus trees that are a giant magnet for all manner of pests. I don't want to use systemic pesticides, as I don't relish eating fruit with pesticide residuals, which is why I grow my own fruit. But, we are in extreme times, and as they say, "extreme times require extreme measures". I am very careful to apply only the recommended amounts and frequencies. I spray my Spinosad in the evening, after the bees have gone back to the hives, and try to spray only after blossom time is over (not always possible with my lemons, as they bloom multiple times). Patty S.