You already have cucumber plants in the ground? That might be part of the problem. When you plant a little on the early side, the cucumber plants are in soil that is cooler than they like and grow slower, stay a little weaker and are very vulnerable to diseases and pests because they are less vigorous. It is recommended that you wait until soil temperatures are staying at 60 degrees and nighttime temperatures are staying above 55 degrees consistently before you plant cucumbers. This may sound like a nit-picky kind of point to make, but I have found that when I put plants into the ground when the soil is too cool or the nighttime temperatures are too low for them, they struggle and pests always flock to struggling plants. Those pests are voracious eaters early in the season as they try to establish their own populations so early plants are a prime target for them. Once you have white flies, they may be hard to control and almost impossible to eliminate. There are some things you can do but success can be elusive. They reproduce in as little as 20-30 day cycles so you have to be vigilant because about the time you eliminate the ones you have, new ones start hatching. If the seedlings were in a greenhouse or in flats on your patio or whatever, then using sticky yellow traps to catch them might be the easiest method. It will knock down their numbers quite a bit. I don't know how effective yellow sticky traps are out in a garden. I'd be worried that they'd trap and catch too many beneficial insects in the garden so I don't use them that way. If the cumcumber plants already are in the ground, you can scout the undersides of the leaves for the whiteflies and their eggs. Remove all you find. If a leaf is just covered in whiteflies, remove the entire leaf and dispose of it in the trash. You can try spraying the undersides of the leaves with neem oil or with a purchased insecticidal soap product. Both work somewhat well. It is just that whiteflies are so persistent that nothing organic totally eliminates them. You also can use a small handheld vacuum or a shop vac (if your extension cord is long enough to reach the garden) to suck the pests off the leaves. Then, open the shop vac away from the garden and dump the insects quickly into a bowl of soapy water to drown. Or, put a couple of inches of water with a couple of drops of soap added to it in the bottom of the canister of the wet-dry shop vacuum before you vacuum the pests off the leaves. I plant tons of plants that have small flowers to attract beneficial insects to my garden. For the most part, the beneficial insects control the pest insects like whiteflies. Green lacewings are particularly voracious eaters and they like whiteflies. So do lady bugs. You can plant flowers like sweet alyssum, dill, yarrow, chamomile, verbena bonariensis, ammi, tansy, feverfew, catmint, veronica, catnip, lemon balm, etc. to attract beneficial insects. Some people feel like nasturtiums help repel whiteflies. I have no idea if that is true, but I plant tons of nasturtiums in my garden as companion plants and I do feel like they are helpful. You can order green lacewings and put them in your garden, but if you don't have a large enough food supply for them, they'll leave. Of course, they'll likely gobble up the whiteflies and other pests before they leave. I have had green lacewings all over the property for a good month now, so there must be a lot of something for them to eat because some years I barely see them at all, and certainly not this early. The lady bugs have been out and active very early too. Finally, consider your cultural practices. Pest insects often attack plants that are stressed, and the cause of the stress often is something that is going on in the soil itself and which then affects the plants. Be sure you aren't feeding your plants high-nitrogen quick-release fertilizers because plants that are overfed nitrogen, especially early in the season when they are small, become magnets for pest insects. Whiteflies also are particularly attracted to plants grown in soil that suffers from magnesium deficiency or from a phosphorus deficiency. I usually just let the beneficial insects take care of pests like whiteflies and never have much of an issue with them, so I haven't tried Spinosad on them and have no idea if it would kill them, but in general, Spinosad has been very effective on pest insects. I just don't use it much because it is a broad-spectrum pesticide so it can kill beneficial insects and pollinators. As a last result you could try a pyrethrin product. I personally avoid using any pyrethrin product except as a drastic last result because they are more dangerous than I'd like, but they work. I keep a bottle of Take-Down Spray in my potting shed and use it so little that one bottle lasts about 5 years. It is a blend of pyrethrim and canola oil. It probably would be fairly effective on whiteflies.....at least as effective as any other control. If you prefer a synthetic control to an organic one, someone who uses chemicals will have to tell you what works for them. There's a couple of things I'd do if I had a persistent whitefly issue (even one that has developed only in the last year or two). I probably would use silver, reflective mulch underneath the plants (you can use the redneck version....heavy-duty alumnum foil) and as soon as the seed had emerged from the soil, I'd cover the plants with a lightweight floating row cover and I wouldn't remove it until the cucumbers were beginning to flower. That would keep the whiteflies off of the plants while they were small and more vulnerable. Since your whitefly issue developed last year and you're already seeing them this year, they must have overwintered on some sort of plant. At the end of the season, destroy all the dead foliage where pests may hibernate or hide. You can run over the dead foliage with a lawn mower and chop it up into smaller pieces and put it in your compost pile. Build the pile and keep it going as a hot, working compost pile so the heat created by the pile will kill any pests attempting to overwinter in it, and so the heat will break down all the plant matter before spring. Good luck with the whiteflies and with the cucumbers. At least it is very early in the season so you can start over with new plants if the current plants are too heavily infested to save. Finally, if this is the sort of infestation that just totally ruins your garden and makes you crazy, you can buy and release whitefly predators. Normally I wouldn't even recommend that for a problem this early in the year because often the pest insects show up first, and then the predator (beneficial) insects show up to devour them a few weeks later. Buying and releasing predator insects can be expensive and I usually consider it a last resort. However, since you had whiteflies last year, you might feel like buying and releasing the whitefly predators would be worthwhile. I'll find someone who sells the whitefly predators and link them below. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Whitefly Predators at Arbico Organics

Hey Bill, IS there a time frame for using the worm castings? I ask because for me, I have to start thinking of putting my plumeria to bed by October. I do have my 600 watt HPS light and I plan on buying at least one more so I can keep some of them growing like your Pyshco White(BTW...I should have a few flowers opening up here in the next day or so.). Do the worm castings give off any odor? Please report back on the worm castings. I am curious to how the other ingriedients will work for the plumeria.

Housefly larvae are about the size of a grain of rice, and are white. Soldier fly larvae are dirty-white to grey, about half an inch long and roughly the same circumference as a number two pencil. Based on your description, I'd lay odds that you have soldier fly larvae in your bin. If I understand you correctly, you had the bin outside, but recently moved it indoors due to heat. Is that right? Know that, while adult soldier flies will not willingly come indoors and there are few suitable places indoors for the larvae to pupate, it is possible that they may crawl from the bin, find a nice pupation site, and develope into adults that will be trapped inside your home. A bin with a resident population of soldier fly larvae is best kept outdoors. Know, too, that soldier fly larvae are drawn to all environments of decaying organic materials, not just to food scraps or stinky, anaerobic systems, as is the case with houseflies. It is normal to find them in healthy worm bins and compost piles. Their presence in your system is not indicative of something you did wrong, rather, it is a normal and, while admittedly kind of icky, highly beneficial. Consider putting the bin back outdoors in a location protected from sunlight but through which air can freely move. Keep the bin damp (the soldier fly larvae will help with this as their activity tends to increase moisture in worm bins) and the worms will easily tolerate the high temps. Kelly S

Red lava rock, or red-lava-sand, is a great source of iron and potassium. pH of red-lava-rock is 8.2. Red-lava rock is OK like 3 or 4 pieces, too much will UP the soil pH, plus prevent water from soaking through. I went to my neighbor when it was above 90 F one summer. She mulched her roses with THICK layer of black lava rock. I touched them, and they are the same temp. as our rock-hard-clay. She overkilled on the lava-rock: too much potassium drove down nitrogen, so her roses didn't have much leaves, lots of blooms. I would use no more than 3 pieces per rose .. too much and one gets iron-burnt (brown-spot). http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1539970/lava-rock-as-mulch ocdgardener(8) From what I understand about Lava Rocks is: Lava rock breaks down into Lava Sand. From all the sand in the bags I know it happens! Lava Sand is recommended as a soil amendment to HOLD MOISTURE. Now, the only thing I'm not sure about is temperature. I did notice though oddly enough last night when I got home from work the plants in the same bed mulched with cedar were wilting, the plants surrounded by lava were not. Here's the positives I've found thus far. On a slope where my bed is, compost, and every thing else added at the base of the plants washes down to the bottom and is replaced with bare soil. I have to add mulch over and over because it all slides away. The Lava Rocks are not only holding the compost in place but are keeping me from having bare soil. I know it does because we had a heavy rain this morning and I looked and everything was in place! --Not the usual bare soil I see after a rain! I think I should explain how I'm using the rock. I'm taking one rock at a time and pressing it into the soil. When you think of lava rocks as a mulch I think most people tend to imagine it piled up. ocdgardener(8) oh and btw you can't really see that much of the rock anyway - because the plants cover them. Example: This is what the yard looks like in the spring. ocdgardener(8) Update on the lava rock! I bought a soil thermoter and tested the temps. Although not lower, the temps were pretty close to the same by a degree. Also, I have calendulas blooming in the bed in the HEAT of summer. I've never had that before! mrwsm_yahoo_com Lava Rock has low thermal mass. It does not retain heat. Lava Rock keeps the soil soft like mulch, so if there is a weed, no problem, it pulls really easy. I prefer red lava rock, although I have both. Never put plastic underneath it! It keeps most weeds out as is. rickjones I don't know what happened to my original post, but here is a short repeat. LAVA ROCKS ARE WONDERFUL PLANTERS, ESPECIALLY IN THE EXTREME HEAT OF THE MOHAVE DESERT. Yup. I build and use cedar planters and window boxes all over my home, they are great, but do not compare with the flowers grown in the lava rocks that I hollow out and plant a variety of species in. Plants in these rocks see temps to 120 degress in our summers and do just fine! They retain moisture, cool with the air temps, and fertilize plants naturally. I don't use lava rock for bedding, I can see the problems with that. But as a planter? The best planter I have ever had. AND, no maintenance, and years of use looking great. jocoreed_yahoo_com Anyone who questions the ability of lava rock as a growing medium needs to come visit our islands out here in the Pacific. Our Hawaiian islands are completely volcanic is soil and sediment, covered in pure lava rock, and we have the most beautiful plants, trees, produce, and the like. Lava rock and volcanic soil is some of the most nutrient friendly planting medium on earth and is porous enough that it allows for good oxygenation and water flow. Come visit our islands and then come back and post how it's horrible to grow anything in volcanic rock or lava sand. Just my two cents : ) Aloooooha! http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1539970/lava-rock-as-mulch