insecticides

[mnjrutherford]

Well, we discovered 2 pine trees yesterday that have been eaten down to stem by a chartreuse worm with black spots. The remaining worms have been handpicked and foot squashed.

I still haven't sprayed the bt, I'm kinda nervous about using it to be honest. Maybe I should exchange for the dust?

OR

Would diamataceouueos (HOW do you spell it?) earth be equally efficacious against worms AND beetles?

Yet another "poacher" has begun to plague our garden. Deer have eaten the tops of nearly all my onions! Including the ones I was allowing to go to seed! We've hung socks filled with a few mothballs around the garden. We've heard this would be an effective deterrent. Have any of you had experience with this technique?

Mineral oil on the silks? That certainly sounds like the easiest, cheapest way to go. Probably easiest to acquire as well?

[ottawagardener]

Best defence against deer besides a large growling dog patrolling the area and that may cause havoc in your garden is fencing. It's expensive though.

[wildseed57]

I try to cbe as organic as possible, I have used BT and the oil method on corn silk, I also use a mix of D.E. and hot pepper powder on my plants along with hot pepper spray and neem oil. D.E. works pretty good on almost any insect, but you have to make sure that you don't get it on the flowers as it will kill bees as well. I will often spay a little liquid lime and sulfur mix to kill mold and mildew. I don't have a deer problem, but if you dust with Hot pepper powder it should work on stopping deer they might not like the smell or taste of liquid or powdered sulfur on the plants. I make my pepper powder from Ghost peppers and other really hot habaneros, I put the dried peppers in a old blender and run it till the whole peppers are reduced to a very fine powder, when you take the top off you need to make sure your face is not near it when you open it up least you get a good dose of it yourself, if that happens you will know why it kills bugs. There are quite a few people that use heavy chemicals around me which increese the amount of resistant insects, so they just keep adding more and stronger chemicals on their vegetables. I find that I now have more bugs because of all the junk being sprayed, but because I just use natural products and selectively kill the bad guys I am getting a lot of help from the good guys also. Sure I still loose some plants mostly the weak and damaged plants, but I try and plant enough so that if I loose some I still have enough for myself. I have some bad years where I will loose a lot of my plants, but I will still loose less than the people who use a lot of chemicals.
George W.

[peppereater]

I would avoid the mothballs, myself. They're very toxic. Deer are a problem I don't have, but evidenylt, what works on onr group of deer may not work on another group, the peppers are worth a try but they may ignore that or grow less put-off over time. One thing I've heard is to run a bunch of strands of thread around, deer don't like to feel something they can't see.
As for DE, I am not sure if it's effective on soft-bodied insects, it works by getting between body parts and being ground into the tissues, where it causes loss of body fluid.
Don't be hesitant to use Bt, if you only use it to target things that are eating certain things, other insects won't be bothered. It must be consumed to have any effect.