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Post by mnjrutherford on May 30, 2009 8:04:49 GMT -5
My corn is starting to tassle and a lot of damage has been done by a green catapillar. Is it safe for my corn for me to pull back the leaves and pluck this thing out? That's my standard method of bug killing. Drop it in a bucket of soapy water and call it great! But we've never had this much corn and I've never seen the worms go after it like this either. Maybe because we have so much and I haven't been able to spend as much time being vigilant?
Regardless, a lot of tassle is missing or down right gone on some. Do I need to do anything to mitigate this situation?
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Post by PatrickW on May 30, 2009 8:24:00 GMT -5
If hand picking isn't working, using a product with Bt is probably the way to go. You can open the ears a little bit then close it to go after the worms, but probably don't want to rip the ears completely open when they are young.
Since your transgenic corn next door is probably Bt corn, you'll probably have problems with the corn worms having some resistance to it.
Bt comes from soil bacteria, is organic and harmless to everything except caterpillar like creatures.
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 30, 2009 12:51:33 GMT -5
Thanks Patrick! I'll give that a shot. By the by, there is no corn in the next door field. Something odd is going on, just don't know what. The farmer, whom we now know, laid down turkey manure on the part of the field that is across the creek a week or so ago. He has done absolutely nothing to the area that we border. The corn SHOULD have been planted no later than May 15th. VERY odd indeed. Mike thought that he had sprayed RoundUp while we were out one day because he thought things were turning brown. Now, several weeks later, it turns out that it was just the auger weed ripening. I'm planning to write another letter to the owner to see if we can get use of at least a couple acres of the land. I'm hoping that the farmers inactivity is God's intervention to give us an opportunity to get what we want. Only time will answer that question.
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