June 13, 2000
The Battle of the Bugs

           As I write, we’ve just endured a “noreaster” that dumped 3 ˝” of rain into my rain gauge.  It was cold too with a high of only 53 degrees and that was at 10 A.M. the morning of the storm.  This has certainly been a spring to remember.  If I were to truly express my feeling about this spring they wouldn’t be able to print them.  There would be more deleted expletives than there were on Nixon’s Whitehouse tapes.  I just came back from my garden at WRGB.  The trench where I’d planted my potatoes was filled with water right to the brim.  I assume that they will have rotted and I’ll have to replant.  There was no sign of life showing from the row of bean seeds that I put in two weeks ago.  I assume they’ve rotted and I’ll be replanting there as well.  The tomatoes and peppers were still there but haven’t grown a bit due to the lack of heat and sun.  I have to keep reminding myself that, as disappointing as this season is for me, it is merely that; a disappointment.  My heart goes out to the farmers who depend on the weather to be kind to them.  For them, this spring goes far beyond disappointment; it’s a real economic disaster.  Hopefully, drier, warmer days are ahead.

                With those warmer days will come the annual crop of buggy pests.  It’s frustrating to watch plants we’ve struggled so hard to get going (especially this year) get attacked by insects or suffer from fungal diseases.  After all the effort we put in, few can simply shrug and walk away.  Most of us are going to “do something about it”.  The first stop is usually at the garden shop.  Standing there, among all those sprays and dusts, it dawns on you that you really have no idea what you need.  All you know is that you want to be rid of those #!@+#!@ bugs that are chewing up your roses or beans.  Adding to your dilemma is your “politically correct” desire to consider the effect of your actions on the environment.  While this attitude is admirable, it doesn’t help you with your current problem.  I can’t be there to help you pick out the product you need but I can give you an overview of what’s out there.

                I like to break down insecticides into three categories: contact killers, ingested killers and systemic insecticides.

                The contact killer and ingested killer categories contain both chemical and organic products.  So far, all systemic insecticides are chemical based.

                Contact killers are substances that kill any insect they come into contact with at the time they’re sprayed.  Insects that re-infest the plant after the spray has evaporated will not be affected.  Malathion is a well-known contact killer that has been in use for many years.  Insecticidal soap, horticultural oil and pythrethrin are all examples of non-chemical and organic contact killers.  At this point, I’d like to emphasize that, just because and insecticide is non-chemical or organic doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s harmless to you or wildlife in your yard.  You will find virtually the same warnings on chemical and non-chemical insecticides.  Pyrethrin, an organic insecticide that’s been around for years, is a very powerful agent that acts on the nervous system of insects should be used with the same caution that you’d observe when using diazinon.  My use of pyrethrin has fallen off with the introduction of insecticidal soap sprays.  I find insecticidal soaps to be quite effective against soft bodied insects like aphids.  When I am confronted with hard-bodied insects like scale, I’ll turn to the horticultural oil sprays.  These oil sprays coat the insects.  Since insects breathe through holes in their abdomens, the light oils do a nice job suffocating them.  For many years heavier oils sprays were used in orchards as a dormant oil spray to smother insect eggs before they hatched.  These dormant oil sprays were too thick to use on actively growing plants since they would smother the leaves as well.  The new, horticultural oil sprays are much lighter and won’t harm the plant but WILL smother the insects.  I see the bottom of the page looming so, let me just say this before I go.  When you have an insect or other problem with a plant, bring a sample of the insect or damage to the garden center with you (sealed in a baggie of course).  This will avoid guesswork.  Locate the “Ortho Problem Solver” reference book at the garden center.  It’s a wonderful resource and contains an amazing amount of information.  There’s even a home version available so you a can same time driving back and forth to the garden center.  Of course the remedies are biased but at least you can identify the problem and proceed.  This is an involved topic so I’ll continue next week.  Thanks for the read.