Last year Emerald Ash Borer was found in Iowa for the first time, in Allamakee County.  If you are wondering if it will arrive in your neighborhood, and if it does what do we do about it you have an opportunity to learn.

There will be three informational meetings on Thursday, March 31, 2011.  The first will be at 9:30 AM in Tama Hall, room 107 on the Hawkeye Community College Campus.  The second is at 1:30 PM at the Civic Center in Waverly and the third will be at 5:30 PM at the Civic Center in Parkersburg.  Preregistration for the Parkersburg program is requested. 

Mark Shour, Iowa State Extension Entomologist, and Robin Pruisner, State Entomologist with Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, will start the interactive program by providing an overview of the pest.  They will take questions from the audience to answer specific questions and concerns.

The programs are sponsored by Black Hawk, Bremer, Butler and Grundy County Extension and are free and open to the public.  For more information or to preregister for the Parkersburg program, contact Bremer County Extension at 319-882-4275, Butler County Extension at 319-267-2707, Grundy County Extension at 319-824-6979 or the Black Hawk County Extension at 319-234-6811.

There will more than likely be more informational meetings all over Iowa as the year progresses.  As soon as I hear of them, I will post them on the blog.

Dig it!

Posted under Education, Event, Pests

When I was growing up near Cosgrove, west of Iowa City, I would go to my neighbor’s house after school.  Mid Davin was an older lady who made noodles and cookies.  I would get her mail on my way past the box and come visit with Mid for the afternoon.  I remember watching a lot of Jeopardy and other afternoon game shows.  When the news came on, I went back to my house and did my homework.  I figured out years later that my Mom and Mid’s kids had probably created this arrangement to provide Mid with some company each day and to help keep me from killing my sister and brother.  One of the things I got out of it, other than some great memories of the cookie and fresh noodle smells, was how messy boxelder bugs are. 

Mid didn’t complain too much about them getting in the house, but she hated all the spots they left on her windows.  I don’t think I ever helped her clean the windows because she always got to them before I got out of school! 

Boxelder bugs are pretty common in Iowa and are most abundant after summers where May is very warm and July is very dry.  I don’t think we have to worry about that this year.  However, there can still be problems even in years when a widespread “outbreak” of Boxelder bugs doesn’t occur.

Most of the warm parts of the year you probably won’t see too many.  I have seen a few on my flowers and bushes in the garden, but they haven’t ”attacked” the house yet.  They live, feed and reporduce on trees, shrubs and other plants which include boxelders (surprise, surprise), maples and ashes. 

A boxelder tree.

A branch of the boxelder with what looks like seed helicopters!

Boxelder bugs feed on the sap from the host plants but don’t cause any significant damage.  They become a nuisance in the fall when they leave their plant homes to find a warm spot for the winter.  You will know when this happens when you see them congregating on the warm side of the houses… and on the windows leaving spots from their feet! 

They move through cracks in the foundation and siding, gaps along the windows and doors and other small openings.  While in the walls or attics they are inactive as long as they are cold.  If they get warmed by heat from the furnace or the sun they become active during the winter and that’s when they crawl into the rooms where you can see them.  And probably leave spots on your walls.

There is no good way to figure out when and where a problem will be until it starts.  By then it is probably too late for treatment.  Boxelder bugs can be controlled on the trees in the mid summer with insecticides (labeled for boxelder bug control) but it will probably not work well.  Spraying large trees is difficult and is usually impractical.

Same as with the Asian Lady Beetle, the best way to keep Boxelder bugs out of your house is to seal all possible entry sites.  You can spray to reduce the number outside to limit the number that will get inside.  You can use a lawn and garden insecticide or soapy water spray (which is 5 Tablespoons of liquid detergent to a gallon of water) on masses of bugs on and along the foundation in the fall.  You may have to repeat the applications especially when you use the soapy water spray.

There is no easy way to get rid of Boxelder bugs that are already inside the house.  they are usually not killed by the household aerosol inseciticides and most are not of much benefit.  The best way to control bugs already in the house to is vacuum, sweep or pick them up and discard them.  Sounds familiar!

So far they haven’t made it into our house yet, but I’ll have to keep an eye on the windows and make sure the boxelder doesn’t mess them up!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Pests

Ahhh.  Fall… when the tomato plants turn brown but still try to put out a couple of fruits, the heat and humidity drop (usually!), and the Asian Lady Beetles return to our consciousness.

Asian lady beetles are 1/3 inch in length, dome-shaped, are yellowish-orange to red with variable black spots on the back (19 of them). Deep orange is the most common color. The spots may be faint or missing and there is a black "W" shaped mark on the thorax (right behind the head).

What we know as the Asian Beetle is the multicolored Asian lady beetle or Harmonia axyridis.  It isn’t clear where the Asian lady beetle originated, but they arrived by accident in ports like New Orleans in the late 1980s and have been crawling and flying themselves to all corners of the country. 

Asian lady beetles are beneficial insects by eating other pests in trees during the summer and in fields and gardens during the fall.  They eat aphids and that is worth keeping them around for me.  However, our problem with them is during the cold season when they enter our houses. 

In their natural habitat, Asian lady beetles overwinter in large congregations in the cracks and crevices on cliff faces.  Since we don’t have a large number of cliffs in the Iowa, the side of a house looks just as good to the beetle.  They fly to sunny, exposed surfaces as they get ready to hibernate through the winter. They will crawl around and find any sort of crevice and often end up crawling into our homes.  This makes them accidental invaders.  They do not feed or reproduce indoors and they cannot attack the house structure, furniture or fabrics.  They don’t sting or carry diseases, but they can pinch, may leave a slimy smear and they have an odor when squished.  They are just downright annoying.

Asian lady beetles enjoy eating aphids and Soybean aphids are a pose of the, wouldn’t you know it, soybean.  I know everyone thinks that now that the beans are being harvested they will be flocking to your home.  And some of them may, but the timing of the beetle flight varies.  It is usually from mid-September through October, but depends mainly on the day length and the weather.  The first warm day after the first fall frost will find those beetles trying to find their winter spots.  So far, it looks like the frost is a little ways away this year.

So how do you keep them out of your house.  Well, you need to seal exterior gaps and cracks around windows, doors, eaves, roofs, siding and other points of access before the beetles appear.  Sounds simple, right?  Probably not since it is time consuming, impractical and usually not 100% effective.  For large infestations you can try spraying pyrethroid insecticides such as permethrin or esfenvalerate to the outside of buildings when the beetles appear to help prevent them from getting in.  Indoor insecticides usually don’t work well because it is impossible to reach all of the lady beetles that are hidden in the walls.  The best thing to do is vacuum or sweep them up and discard if they are already in the house.  And for long-term relief, plant trees that will grow to shade the south and west sides of the house.   That way you don’t have to drag the vacuum out each time you see one!

Dig it!

Posted under Autumn, Pests

I would love to have a Magnolia tree in our yard, but we don’t have any place to put it on our slightly-less-than-a-quarter-acre-lot-that-already-has-seven-trees-on-it. 

For those fortunate enough to have a Magnolia tree, you may be dealing with an unfortunate aspect of that ownership.  Magnolia scale.  The Magnolia scale is the largest scale insect in Iowa. 

Adult females may reach nearly 1/2 inch in diameter when they are fully grown.  It is a shiny tannish brown and smooth.  As scales grow they are often covered with a white, mealy wax that is lost when the crawlers emerge.   The crawlers are the babies.

Magnolia scales have sucking mouthparts and feed on the sap of the tree, which stresses a heavily infested plant and can result in stunted growth, yellowish foliage, branch dieback or even the death of the plant.  Scales have also fed on Daphne and Virginia Creeper.  Magnolia scales produce large quantities of honeydew (which is a sugary excretion) that build up on the tree’s leaves and twigs.  Sooty mold is a black fungus that grows on that honeydew and turns the covered leaves and twigs black.  The honeydew also attracts ants, bees, wasps and flies.

The honeydew formed by the Magnolia scale.

The sooty mold that forms on the honeydew along with the adult females and the crawlers (babies).

From Ohio State University Extension, “the magnolia scale spends the winter on one to two year old twigs as tiny, dark-colored nymphs.” In the spring, with warmer temperatures, the scales start to suck the sap and molt once in May. This is the point where the males remain small (only about 1/8 of an inch) while the females get to their larger size.  (read more here).

If you are looking at adding a magnolia tree to your yard, check the new plant out carefully before you buy it.  Most of the scale infestations come with the plants with the large scale exoskeletons being left from the previous season.  If you find any of these remains, don’t buy the tree.

In order to control the scale, remove and destroy any heavily-infested branches and then treat with a contact insecticide which includes horticultural oil, insecticidal soap or other ornamental synthetic insecticide.  Or use a systemic insecticide (imidacloprid) in late August or early September.  A dormant horticultural oil can also be used in late fall or early spring when the tree is, obviously, dormant. 

-Horticultural oils at 1.5 to 2.0″ can be applied after the crawlers have settled into their feeding site in late August.  This can be very effective in reducing the scale population.  Make sure you thoroughly wet the stems and leaves. 

-Dormant oils can be applied in October to November and again in March to kill the nymphs that have overwintered on the stems.  Be sure to check spring buds for damage as they begin to swell. 

-Insecticide application can also be successful if they are applied when the insects are in their fresh crawler stage.. usually late August or early September.  If you apply the spray before crawlers appear or after they become dormant, it will have little effect on controlling the infestation.

Check with your local Extension office or favorite garden center for specifics on the oils or insecticides. 

At least this sounds a bit more manageable than those darn Japanese Beetles!

Dig it!

Posted under Pests

This…

Japanese Beetle

… is not welcome in my garden.

This is the Japanese Beetle, not to be confused with the Asian Lady Beetle…

Asian Lady Beetle

Chances are if you haven’t seen the Japanese Beetle in your garden yet, it will be there soon.  They have been reported in 44 of Iowa’s counties since 1994. 

Map from Iowa State University Extension

If you are in a county not shaded in red and you find a Japanese Beetle contact your local Extension office.

They were transported into New Jersey with ornamental plants from Japan in about 1916 and have been spreading ever since. 

Adult Japanese beetles are around from late June through August, about 6 weeks.  The adults lay eggs in July and August in grassy areas, and these eggs then hatch into white grubs that feed on plant roots and organic matter in the soil.  The grubs stay in the soil until the following June when they become new adults and emerge from the soil to start the cyce again.  Now, while you can treat your lawn for grubs, the female Japanese beetle lays her eggs in grassy areas over a LARGE area, not just your lawn. 

And they are hungry little buggers.  They feed on leaves and fruits (and the flowers) of over 350 kinds of plants.  I found one on my Butterfly Bush, the neighbors asparagus and several on our basil, chokeberry and hibiscus.  They are apparently especially fond of roses, raspberry, grape leaves and crabapple and linden tree foliage.  I don’t have a linden but they haven’t attacked our grape leaves, raspberries or our crabapple yet.  However, they have decided a couple of my roses are their favorite places to dine out.  I have seven separate rose bushes, not including the roses we got from our friend Bill many moons ago.  The beetles love my Sven rose bush…

These two are trying to enjoy a breakfast on my Sven rose bush.

and they have taken bites out of the Firefighter…

The result of a beetle munching on my rose...

World War II….

This one is working away on the leaf of my World War II rose

and Strike it Rich roses.

Before the "invasion". Actually, they only got a couple, but she is loaded again with buds, so I have to stay on top of it. Too bad I have to work so early in the morning. I could really get them taken care of!

I have found them on my Pink Knock-out….

I took this picture and then realized that the round thing on the right is a spider that has snagged this beetle for himself. I left it for him to enjoy.

and my miniature chinese rose, too.  (I can’t find a picture that doesn’t have it buried for winter, sorry)

They seem to be leaving my Ole rose (yes, he is Sven’s “brother”) alone.  It is on the other side of the house and that may make the difference, but they were on the chokeberry bush just to the east…. hmmm.

Controlling the adult beetles is rather hard to do because they emerge daily for several weeks.  I have been able to get a lot of them by handpicking, but a word of warning…  They tend to drop if they feel threatened, so I have had to get my hand or the bucket under the flower or stem I am grabbing.  Oh, and they can also fly. 

My weapon of choice against the Japanese Beetles. They haven't bitten or stung me, but they do leave a bit of, um, gunk on the gloves when they get squished. You can also just brush them into a bucket of soapy water.

The early morning seems to be the best time to get them since they appear more sluggish.  You can use Sevin, Eight or Tempo to spot spray infested foliage but multiple applications are required to keep control.  And make sure to only use them according to label instructions.  AND… spraying the adult stage doesnt’ control the larval stage (they tend be grubs in the turf) with grub damage to the turf and treatment of the turf doesn’t prevent adult damage to ornamental plants.  Tree foliage can be protected with a soil-drench application of a systemic insecticide (this works through the roots of the plant), but make sure you apply it several weeks ahead of the beetle emergence.  I used a systemic on my roses, but I didn’t get it on in time.  The beetles appeared within two weeks of my application.   Again, some of the tastiest morsels for the Japanese beetle appear to be peach, cherry (haven’t see any on mine, yet), plum, apple, linden, birch (again, none yet), elm, Norway maple, horse chestnut, willow, grape (not yet), raspberry (not yet), Virginia creeper, rose (oh, yes!), hollyhock, hibiscus, dahlia and zinnia.  Now, I will say that I treated our trees this spring with a systemic so that may have been enough to keep the beetle at bay.

There is some hope….  Japanese beetles rarely attack red maple, magnolia, white oak, red oak, common lilac, burning bush, hydrangea, forsythia, rhododendron, boxwood, holly, juniper, arborvitae, yew, fir, spruce, pine, impatiens, begonia, ageratum, columbine, sedum, coral bells and coreopsis.  And, for some reason, they have left our “Bill’s roses” alone.  It may be that they finished blooming before the adults emerged and therefore don’t taste as good.  I don’t know, but I keep checking, just in case….

Oh, and there are supposed traps out there (floral lure and sex attractant), but I wouldn’t use them.  The University of Kentucky did some research that showed the traps attract more beetles than they catch and that plants near the traps may have more damage than if no traps are used at all. 

So get out there and get rid of those Japanese beetles!

And Dig it!

Posted under Pests

Lynne sent me an email saying that she has a wonderful patch of potatoes but has some bugs on them.  She called them potato bugs and that brings up an image of the Colorado Potato Beetle.

Colorado Potato Beetle. Image from Duke University.

However, there is also an insect called the potato leafhopper.

Potato Leafhopper

Potato Leafhopper adult and nymph.

It is probably the beetle since the leafhopper relies on the wind to get to where it is going.  It cannot survive our winters and gets blown in on the wind, so where it lands is where it eats.

The Colorado Potato Beetle, however, is common in Iowa’s home gardens.  They are about 3/8 of an inch long and have an oval body.  If you care to count, there are ten alternating black and yellow stripes on the wing covers.  Hmm.  Must be a Hawkeye fan. 

The adults hide in wooded areas and other protected locations for the winter and begin laying eggs on host plants in early spring.  These host plants include potato, pepper, eggplant and tomato. The eggs hatch into dark  red, humpbacked larvae with dark heads and two rows of black spots on the sides of the abdomen.

Potato Beetle larvae

The larvae often feed in groups and cause isolated severe defoliation.  When the larvae grows to 1/2 inch in length, they burrow into the soil to transform into the adults that appear in mid-summer to repeat the cycle. 

The beetle is difficult to control.  Hand picking may be the best method as long as you don’t have a whole field of potato plants.  If you decide to use an insecticide, complete and thorough coverage of the infested plants is necessary for good control. Liquid sprays are usually more effective than dust applications.  Now, these bugs have been around for a long time and decades of repeated insecticide use, the beetle has developed a resistance to some insecticides, including Sevin.  If Sevin doesn’t work, try Eight, also called permethrin, or bifenthrin, kaolin clay (Surround) or azadiractin (Neem).  You can also utilize Mother Nature.  The Predaceous stink bug feeds on Colorado potato beetles.  Just make sure you don’t step on them!

Predaceous Stink Bug

I wouldn’t go out and recruit a bunch of these, however.  They will also eat monarch caterpillars.

To help control the Colorado Potato Beetle, examine plants early in the spring for these beetles.  If they are found, the undersides of the leaves should be looked at to see if there are any eggs.  Also check for larvae.  You should only use the insecticides if the insect populations are large enough.  Otherwise, you will just have to pick them off and drop it into a container with detergent and water.  The Extension office at the University of Maine even suggests using a hand held vacuum cleaner.  Hmmm.  If you do either of these every 2 to 3 days, all the Colorado potato beetles life stages should be removed. 

I am picturing a run on hand held vacuums…. I call dibs!

Dig it!

Posted under Pests

KC left a comment on the slug bug post about earwigs and ants.  I’ll talk about the ants in another post, but KC is not the only one noticing all the earwigs around the garden.

Earwig

They are somewhat common but are really noticed after prolonged periods of wet weather.  We have certainly had that!

Earwigs are pretty easy to identify… they have some pincers on the end of their abdomen.  The females pincers are fairly straight, while the males are more curved.  The pincers are used as both offensive and defensive weapons.  Though they may try to pinch you if you capture and handle them, they do not harm people.  They are about 5/8 of an inch long and adults are dark brown with a reddish head and pale yellow-brown legs. Juveniles are lighter in color.

The female earwig (on top) has pincers that are more straight than the curved ones of the male.

They are outdoor insects that can usually be found in damp areas like under mulch, dead leaves, logs  and piles of stuff that would keep moisture around.  They can also be found in rotted wood where they feed on moist, decaying plant material.  They have been known to attack living plants, including vegetables, fruit trees and ornamental plants but they are considered only minor pests of plants because the damage is widely scattered.  They tend to hide in flowers and plants that provide some protection, like the top of milkweed plants where the leaves are folded together.  They generally eat decaying organic matter, but can eat other insects (like aphids and mites) and plants such as vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants.

Earwigs usually eat just decaying organic material and insects, but can eat plants, too.

Earwigs will sometimes get into your house, but only by accident or when seeking shelter, especially in the fall.  They don’t cause any harm or destruction, they are just an annoyance.  You can just sweep them up in the house and dispose of them.  Outside control is generally not necessary to keep them out of the house, but you can use barrier treatments around the house and on the foundation if you find a large number of earwigs are present. 

Outdoor management of earwigs is not easy and there is probably no way to completely get rid of them from your yard, but you can trap them and physically destroy them.  Place burlap bags, damp boards, damp newpapers or other materials on the ground for them to take shelter under and then collect the individuals and kill them.  You can drown them in a bucket of water or introduce them to the bottom of your shoe.

As a last resort you can spray insecticides on the plants to reduce damage, but make sure to select a home garden insecticide labeled for this purpose.  And always apply according to label directions.  Avoid applying insecticides to flowers because they will harm the beneficial pollinating insects as well.  And try to apply in the late afternoon since earwigs feed at night.

And, no… they don’t climb into your ear to lay eggs in your brain.   They just crawl in to see if there is anything there.  Naw!  They don’t do that, either!

Dig it!

Posted under Pests

Well, okay.  It’s not a bug.  It is a mollusk.  Like a snail, without the mobile home on his back.

With all the moisture we have been getting we don’t just have to worry about mushrooms.  Slugs are also a big problem.  They love it when it is cool and moist.  There are many species of slugs, they are not host-specific and have a very diverse diet with hostas being one of their favorite dinners.  The positive side of the slug is that many species are decomposers and feed on fallen leaves, dead insects and dead worms.  They also provide food for snakes, toads, turtles and birds.  That still doesn’t help the hostas or other plants, though.

If you are determined to get rid of them you will probably have to work at doing so.  Slugs are nocturnal and feed at night when we aren’t looking for them.  They like cool, dark, moist hiding places during the day.  We obviously have the moist conditions down.  When it gets hot and dry, you would think they would die.  Well, they don’t.  They bury themselves int eh soil or find a well-protected (and moist) spot where they are in a kind of state of suspended animation.  They surround themselves in a mucous-like cocoon and wait until it gets wet and cool enough again.

Slugs secrete this slimy mucous at other times as well.  They will leave a silvery trail  as they move across plants and smooth objects.  They feed by grating away the surface of the plant. 

This is a banana slug. Ours don't get this big, but I wanted to show you the slug slime. Yuck.

In order to control slugs you need to control the favorable places where slugs live and reproduce.   Get rid of wood chip mulch and replace with shredded mulch.  The wood chips have a larger surface area for the slugs to hide under during the day.  Open up the garden more to allow more air to dry out the moist spots.  That may not work too well when we have been as wet as we have been, though. 

Wood chip mulch. These provide shelter to the slugs. Replace with shredded mulch.

You can use trap boards or moist newspaper or even carpet samples and place them on the ground around plants where slugs have been feeding.  After a couple of days, look at the underside of the traps and remove and destroy any slugs that have gathered there. 

Slugs love beer. 

Use a shallow container, like a yogurt cup.  Bury it to within a half inch of the rim and fill it with beer or even baker’s yeast dissolved in water.  Slugs will crawl in and drown.  You can put a loose cover over the beer trap to shade it and keep rain from diluting it.

Slugs don’t like to crawl over anything dry, dusty or scratchy.  Put a border of lime, road dust, diatomaceous earth, cinders, coarse sawdust, gravel or sand around your plants or an area of the garden.  In order to secrete enough mucus to free themselves from these materials they become exhausted and die.  If you use this method remember that lime affects the pH of the soil.  And never use salt because it isn’t healthy for most plant growth.

Since slugs are not bugs, they cannot be controlled with insecticides.  You will need to use molluscicides.  And many contain metaldehyde.  It may be effective, but it is rapidly deactivated by sunlight and water so it needs to be reapplied frequently.    You also can’t use it in vegetable gardens and can be toxic to pets if they ingest it. 

If you want to go the most natural way, talk to the toads.  Toads are the most important natural enemy of slugs. 

And I have read that many people also say that ducks keep gardens slug free, too.  Although I think they will quack, er, talk back at you.  The toads may be a bit quieter.

Dig it!

Posted under Pests

Emerald Ash Borer

Well.  It’s confirmed.  The Emerald Ash Borer is in Iowa.  It was found in Allamakee county along the Mississippi River two miles south of the Minnesota border on property owned and managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  It doesn’t sound like much, but four larvae were found in one ash tree on the land and that is bad news. An infestation was discovered last year in Victory, Wisconsin which is nearby.

If you don’t know if you have an ash tree, I found this link to help you identify them.  It’s from Michigan State University.  Michigan has had the infestation since 2003 and has lost millions of trees.  Iowa could lose 80 million.  about 50 million in rural areas and 30 million in urban sites.

Here is a site about the Emerald Ash Borer with more information.  It includes the fact that Michigan has lost tens of millions of ash trees and tens of millions more have been killed in Illinois, Minnesota, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and several other states. 

I previously talked about the EAB.  You can check out that page here.  In that post I mention that the species Fraxinus is the one that the EAB likes to munch on.  I have a Purple Mountain Ash which is of the Sorbus species and not a true ash, so I don’t think the critters will affect them. 

I will post more about the EAB as it comes along.

Dig it!

Posted under Pests, Trees

Sue sent me an email asking about her angel-leaf winged begonias.  She puts them out in the spring and brings them inside to overwinter and take cuttings.  They have become sticky.  The plants look great and are flowering but everything she has tried hasn’t worked.  I don’t know the exact things she tried, but there are some things to try when you think you may have bugs on your houseplants.

A sticky leaf. No it's not a begonia leaf. I didn't have access to Sue's plants and I couldn't find any images of a "sticky begonia leaf".

Okay. Here's a begonia leaf (although not Sue's angel wing) and it has some sort of problem on it's underside. Yuck!

Sticky stuff usually means that you have some hitchhikers from the garden.  Warm and dry conditions in your house, along with the lack of predators, will allow populations of small, soft-bodied insects, like aphids, whiteflies, mealybugs and scales to grow quickly.

Aphids come in different colors.

Obviously, these are red ones.

These are soybean aphids. They probably won't be a problem in your house, but it shows that there are all sorts of aphid types.

Whiteflies. We had these all over our asters. They succeeded in decimating one of the clusters, but we managed to save two others.

Mealybug.

Scales.

They excrete a sticky substance that, when outside, attracts ants.  This substance can also be home to fungal disease.  In order to get rid of the sticky substance you need to get rid of the sticky-substance-secreting pests.  The trick is to do it without hurting the plant. 

Soft bodied insects can be killed with an insecticidal soap or neem oil (always follow label directions).

There are all sorts of choices on store shelves. Ask at your local nursery for what they recommend.

Same for the commercial insecticidal soaps.

Neem is a tree in the mahogany family and most of the tree can be utilized for many medicinal uses. 

This Neem tree is in New Delhi, India. (AFP Photo)

The insecticidal soap can be found on shelves, too, or you can make your own.  We had some asters that became infested with whiteflies one year in our garden.  We bought some insecticidal soap from the store and used the entire bottle up in one use (we had three large plants to coat).  It was going to be expensive if we kept buying it from the store due to the large size of our plants.  After doing some research online we found out we could make our own soap. 

Your ingredients are dish detergent and water. 

We used Dawn, but you can use Ivory, Palmolive or even Murphy’s Oil soap.  The type of soap doesn’t appear to be the main thing to watch for.  The right concentration is the key to be effective and prevent damage to the plants.  I have done this before but can’t remember what the concentration was.  I looked online and found anywhere from 1 teaspoon per quart to 1 tablespoon per quart to 1 tablespoon per gallon.  So, I tried calling around to see what I could find.  One of the articles I read had a phone number.  I called and the person who wrote the article no longer worked there and the person who answered the phone didn’t know.  Everyone I called was very helpful, but didn’t know the correct answer.  Fortunately, my good friend Heidi Tietz-De Silva from Peterson and Tietz Florist and Greenhouses here in Waterloo happened to stop into the station.  So, I thought I would take advantage of our friendship ask “The Professional”.  She only uses Dawn dishwashing liquid in the concentration of 1 part Dawn to 9 parts water.   Sounds good to me (and familiar)!

We keep a spray bottle like this with our gardening stuff. We make sure it is labeled "Insecticidal Soap Only" so we don't use it for something else and regret it later.

Once you have the insecticidal soap mixed up, you have to use it correctly to get the desired results.  Thoroughly cover the plants leaves and stem including the undersides of the leaves.  If you don’t completely wet the insect, you can’t control it.  The insecticidal soap may need to be reapplied every week for a few weeks to control some pests, like spider mites and immature scales, or if you have a severe infestation of aphids or mealybugs.  If you need to spray the plants often, you run the risk of damaging the leaves, so wash or rinse the plants off within a couple of hours after spraying. 

Of course, you could always get a few ladybugs to help out, too, but then you have to deal with them flying around your house!

Dig it!

Posted under General, Pests