BT vs. Spinosad - Do you need both? What OMRI products are........
nighthawk0911
7 years ago
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jane__ny
7 years agoRelated Discussions
langbeinite vs potassium sulfate vs muriate of potash vs kmag
Comments (5)Like Potassium Sulfate (made by reacting Muriate of Potash with sulfuric acid) Muriate of Potash, or Potassium Chloride, is not an acceptable organic fertilizer because of the harm it does to your Soil Food Web and is therefore not an acceptable organic product. langbeinite, Potassium Magnesium Sulfate, or K-Mag is also a very soluble "fertilizer" knwon to be harmful to your Soil Food Web and is therefore not and acceptable organic product. Wood ash would be an acceptable source of both Potash and Calcium except the process of obtaining that ash produces prodigious quantities of air pollution. Composted chicken litter would be a good source, as would any animal manure if it is composted before adding to soil. There is some concern that the manure from egg factories will be loaded with antibiotics that are fed to the caged chickens in an effort to keep them laying eggs as long as possible. Your best bet for correcting any soil nutrient deficiency is compost and organic matter. I have seen my soil go from on deficient in Phosphorus, Potash, Calcium, and Magnesium, and a soil pH of 5.7, to a soil with optimal levels of P, K, Ca, and Mg and a soil pH of 7.2 using only compost and organic matter. It did take time, 3 or 4 years, but I did not spend any of my money on "fertilizers....See MoreSpinosad
Comments (85)Chickencoupe, rather abrasive post. Things we learn in our backyard - some are re-learned from years past - some are going forward. When I thought about the spinosad, I thought about the tomato hornworm I saw this week with brachnid wasp larva on it. Had I put spinosad on THOSE crops , would the parasitic wasps been killed? probably...this stuff is fed to dogs to kill fleas.....There are always unintended consequences and we seem to constantly screw things up with high tech / corporate chemical approaches. My personal goal is to find the balance. My grandparents raised their own food without pesticides or antibiotics and ate well. I remember every summer night snapping beans, shucking corn, and days of canning done by my grandmother. And I remember -the quality of that food-part of which has driven me back to organic and permaculture. By and large I am not seeing what rabid fanaticism prompted your reply. Those few posts raising questions are well thought out. Some real questions. FWIW, I have had NO borer issues this year and I saw them every day. I merely sprayed the stems of my squash with a soap mix (Dr Bronners and water) once a week and used NEEM both as a drench and a leaf wash....See MoreSpinosad & Bt with bees
Comments (19)There is no real easy method of control for red lily beetle, it is more of an effort to manage the population however best you can and it is very labor-intensive. I've never seen red lily beetles here in OK but some folks may have them if they arrived on mail order lilies or such. The beneficial insects (parasitic wasps) that seem to be having success in controlling red lily beetles are, as far as I know, not available commercially yet in the USA. I believe it is the University of Rhode Island that has been experimenting with some European species of parasistic wasps and they've been releasing them on their own (not selling them to gardeners) and studying their effect on the red lily beetle population in the areas where the wasps have been released. They seem to be having some success, but the availability of those species of parasitic wasps commercially likely is years away still. Have you tried Spinosad? Some folks use it to control the red lily beetles either when they are in the soil or as larvae, using it both as a soil drench and to spray the plants. Other than that, if I had them, I'd hand-pick them and destroy them daily and search for and destroy the eggs as well. I wear disposable medical gloves when hand-picking pests and generally carry a plastic bowl of soapy water with me, dropping the hand-picked pests into the bowl to drown. As far as removing eggs from the undersides of leaves, I like to use a lint roller---I roll it over the underside of the leaf when I find eggs of pest insects and the roller pulls the insects right off the leaves. Then I strip that section of the sticky tape off the link roller, roll it up to enclose the eggs inside, and drop the bundle of sticky tape into the kitchen trash can to ensure the eggs go out with the trash. I know it would get tiresome to hand pick, but these pests are such a problem that it takes that sort of intense dedication to keep them to a manageable level. There's always neem, which works somewhat well on them, and if you get desperate enough, you could use systemic or non-systemic synthetic pesticides. It depends on how much time and effort you want to put into fighting them and I suppose it depends on how many lilies you have. I don't know if you've seen the webpage I'm going to link below, but I think it is a very thorough source of info about what works for red lily beetles, with some folks explaining their success. I'd never heard of using used coffee grounds to repel red lily beetles before, but if it works, why not use it? I noticed some folks have had success with DE. I don't use DE much in my garden any more but I like it when I used it. Many of us do use used coffee ground in our gardens or our compost all the time, so why not try using it to repel or deter the lily beetles? It might help and couldn't hurt. Spinosad, by the way, is available in several formulations---as a spray, as a dust and in some pelleted baits like Slug-Go Plus and in a fire ant bait called Come And Get It. I expect the spray would work best for red lily beetles. Red Lily Beetle Info from B&D Lilies Good luck in your battle with the lily beetles. Dawn...See MoreArchitect vs. Interior Designer or Both?
Comments (21)On our house, we began with the architect. He encouraged us to hire an interior designer sooner rather than later. Lucky for us, his wife is an interior designer, and they definitely work well together. We benefit from the opinions of each of them. Also, in our situation, our architect is doing all of the interior elevations and modeling, so it's not split between our architect and a third-party interior designer (one of the reasons we wanted to use his wife). I can't imagine her suggesting anything like moving a wall! She probably looked at the floor plans as he designed them, but she was not involved at that point. Based on what virgilcarter described, it sounds like our architect may be more involved than most - he did the electrical and lighting placement (for the can lights) and stuff like that. In our situation, we are paying the architect a per-foot fee that includes construction administration and 3D modeling. We are paying the interior designer a per-hour fee. We specified what we need her help on, which includes lighting, plumbing fixtures, flooring, tile anywhere and probably some other items I haven't thought of. Things like kitchen design are more the architect and us. We will choose our own appliances (we're really into cooking, and don't need any help in being particular in that category), and will select and purchase our own furniture. Our builder we selected ourselves from some suggestions of the architect; he and the architect have worked together before, and the builder is familiar with the modern design and materials that the architect uses. We really, really like him, and know we will get a lot of helpful advice from our builder once the build starts (just waiting for snow to melt); he's already provided input on some elements such as use of pocket doors. So we're quite confident that he will work well with the architect, but be able to provide us with his independent viewpoint as well....See More
dirtygardener73
7 years ago
Tom
7 years agodirtygardener73
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agonighthawk0911
7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoTom
7 years ago
dirtygardener73