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Location

Message

Date Posted

Dover, DE

i am new and wated to know if there is an organic spray i can use to get rid of vine borer, squash bug and cuke beetle ?

11/6/2009 10:12:49 AM

Anamosa, IA BPIowegian@aol.com

Garlic works well for cucumber beetle.

11/6/2009 10:37:22 AM

Dover, DE

OK thanx Iowegian

11/6/2009 11:13:13 AM

milford, CT,

I don't know about totally getting rid of..but the last 2 years I have used Garlic Barrier and also planted marigolds around the perimeter and have noticed a significant reduction in the number of cucumber beetles..feel free to chime in if anyone else has found this to be effective..Mark

11/20/2009 3:25:59 PM

Colorado Springs, CO

A d-Limonene orange oil can be added to many a solution to enhance insect control. Know that there are two approaches to controlling and killing many an insect, be those direct-contact and residual-contact.

That orange oil is but one suggested substance and yet it need not be too strong within that solution (water, or another soap-based solution), like 1 to 2 oz. per gallon.

Another residual-contact approach is to apply a fresh-water sourced diatomaceous earth (DE)powder and apply that dust on the ground in the vicinity of a vine stump, as well as on the stump vine leading outward a few feet. This fine powder gets into the very small hairs and articulated joints of the beetle/insect and literally grinds through the exoskeleton surface and they lose body fluids. They die by dessication.

This same DE substance can be mixed and scrathed into the upper few inches of soil in the immediate vicinity of any vegetable plant and it can also irritate and cut larval stages of insects as they emerge from the soil....to become SVB's.

Works wonders (for you, at least) on aphids too. I have a tart red cherry tree that has in recent years seen black aphids amassing on fresh young leaf sprouts on branch tips. Almost an overnight arrival. In 2009 I applied this Crawling Insect Killer DE product from Soil Mender Products around the base of that tree and about 6" out from that trunk, as well as poofing the same powder up the trunk about 12". I did NOT have one black aphid appear on any tender leaf tip this year ! Aphids do not fly. The larva emerge from eggs laid in surface materials and they walk and crawl...and climb up from the base. They crawled over and through this fine DE powder, got cut up, lost their body fluids, and died. Organic approach, matural material, and no synthetic chemicals to alter the biology of the soil.

11/24/2009 5:36:04 PM