submerging potted plants to kill pests (Scale, whitefly, mites, ants, aphids)

[carcarlo]

Hi Adam I have been using Ferti lome Triple action plus neem oil and it has worked good , but u must use it every 15 days or so. I once had a bad infestation of Red Spider Mites, and the only thing that eradicated them was Orthene 97 nasty stuff but it works.
Carlos

[FlyingFoxFruits]

Hi Adam I have been using Ferti lome Triple action plus neem oil and it has worked good , but u must use it every 15 days or so. I once had a bad infestation of Red Spider Mites, and the only thing that eradicated them was Orthene 97 nasty stuff but it works.
Carlos

The mites I had were not spider mites, I supposed they are much harder to kill.

[fruit delivery vancouver]

U shud try neem oil & dr bronner sal suds...this will help ya...

No to chemical pesticides.

But Neem oil is a chemical pesticide, it's called Azadirachtin and it's really bad for foraging bee populations.

[LivingParadise]

I use straight neem oil diluted with water, and it does a great job on pests. I have read in multiple articles that it has no effect on bees or other beneficial insects. Sure enough, despite using it frequently, I have seen no effects on the pollinators in my yard - I still have a healthy and numerous population of bees, wasps, ladybugs, etc... so I don't know where this idea that Neem kills bees is coming from, but that is not what I read, nor what I experienced. I am only speaking of Neem alone, though, not when it is mixed in a commercial product with other ingredients.

I did have very good success with water submersion for potted plants, and to this day those that I tried it on faired well and never had the issue again.

But since I am unable to try that technique on plants in-ground, and this area is prone to a lot of pests, I am now testing with Diatomaceous Earth (food grade). I have not said anything about it in the forum yet because I am still in the early stages of testing, but supposedly it can kill fire ants, scorpions, cockroaches, slugs, aphids, mites, termites, nematodes, bed bugs... and has a host of benefits even when taken internally for humans, as long as it's food grade. To my knowledge, as long as applied before a rain, it should mess with critters that have a tough but penetrable shell/exoskeleton if they crawl along the ground, but not flying things. In the short time I've started using it, with the small section of the yard that has been my sample, I have noticed a dramatic improvement in those plants. It's unclear what specifically was getting to them, whether mites, snails, a combination, or something else... But I still see pollinators around them, but they look sooo much healthier. And, my fire ant and scorpion problems seem to be getting less, which was really what I bought it for. And so far, I still see the same number of ladybugs as before. If I'm lucky, this will also help to prevent termites around the home, which would be a great benefit since the neighbors just tented...  Unsure if Diatomaceous Earth also is providing nutrients that my plants are appreciating, or what. I just sprinkled directly over them, and over the soil beneath them, so you could see the white powder all over the leaves and ground. After the rain, you could still see some white residue, but not a powder anymore. Another rain, and evidence of it has mostly washed away to the naked eye, but within 2 weeks I was seeing possible benefits compared to plants that did not receive and Diatomaceous Earth.

I run an organic-only yard, and Diatomaceous Earth is made of organic crushed shells/ocean matter, so to be clear, it's not some kind of manufactured synthetic chemical. My thought was that the contents of what makes up DE is probably all over my yard anyway, since this is the Florida Keys and coral rock is everywhere, but not in a finely ground powder perhaps... Don't know. The way it kills bugs is kind of brutal though, so if I wasn't desperate for a natural scorpion and fire ant solution I wouldn't have embarked on the issue in the first place. But most people feel less guilty killing bugs than I do, and probably won't care that they slowly dehydrate. Their dead carcasses will make for good composting at least... ashes to ashes and dust to dust, as they say. At least they will help to create new life for my plants.

My yard is still loaded with bees, ladybugs, dragonflies, butterflies, etc... so I don't think either the DE or Neem oil are a problem.

[Cookie Monster]

Azadirachtin is indeed harmful to bumble bees and is banned in the UK for that reason. It is relatively safe for honey bees though.

As with everything in life, one needs to navigate a windy path between multiple constraints. At one end of the constraint spectrum we have the goal of zero environmental impact, and at the other end we have feeding mankind affordably and on a massive scale. I don't think it's possible to achieve the latter goal without budging on the former -- ie, it's not possible to feed 7 billion souls without having some sort of environmental impact.

However, we can and should strive to do so with "minimal" environmental impact, and I think azadirachtin is one of the few tools that the modern organic farmer has at their disposal. Certainly it's far better than the conventional pesticides which have environmental consequences that are much more severe.

I use azadirachtin and consider it one of my most important insecticides.

[knlim000]

my abiu seedling completely infested with pest and i use hand sanitizer to wish the leaves that were infected. it seems to work.  i still have some more to clean off the tree.

[huertasurbanas]

Thanks for your report, I am also using  Diatomaceous Earth and it kills ants, and many other insects... in fact, I used it to control fruit fly the last year and it seemed to work.