Insect pests, plant diseases and integrated pest management

[jandtaa 10]

Thanks for the reply.

Do you know the Thai for Borax and where might one buy it?

I will take a look at the shredded corn cob thread.

Re the white pest, my eyes are not so great, but they seem to like zinnia, toms and marigold in that order. Maybe I will try to get a photo and enlarge it.

I enjoy the garden, but I'm not very knowledgeable, so I'm sure I make many mistakes. I just find it fascinating that seeds can grow into so many different things, using the same basic ingredients.

Funny that you mention birds - in the last 2 days I've seen 2 types of bird that I've never seen before, both very small, one with a beak like a humming bird

Just identified the bird foraging amongst my peppers :

tailorbird 

Small bird, genus Orthotomus sutorius, family Muscicapidae, order Passeriformes. It is native to India and other parts of Asia, where it feeds on ants and other insects. It is about 15 cm/6 in long and olive-green,chestnut cap with markings of other tints. Its nest is a dainty structure of leaves stitched together with silk, wool, hair, and vegetable fibre, and contains three or four varicoloured eggs.

common tailor bird image

good photos of Thai bird species at this site to help with identification Thai birds photo gallery

Borax in Thai is สาร บอแรกซ์  or  นําประสนทอง

I brought a small amount from the U.K. which I scrounged off my 95 year old gran who uses it in her laundry you might find it at a large Thai chemists 

me's thinking whitefly as I plant marigolds or tagetes in my polytunnel and greenhouse as a decoy to keep the whitefly off the toms!! marigolds are also good to help deal with harmful root nematodes so a good plant to grow for a couple more reasons than just its pretty flowers !!

don't worry mistakes are a necessary part of the learning experience just keep on enjoying

cheers Jandtaa

Edited March 16, 2009 by jandtaa

[jandtaa 10]

this is mealy bug an unarmoured scale

and this is adult whitefly (their eggs look a little like apids)

here's some ways of dealing with mealybug

Step

1

Identify mealybugs by looking on the undersides of leaves and around leaf joints. These insects look like small (1/10 to 1/8 of an inch) balls of cotton. Mealybug-damaged plants look withered and sickly and may have sticky sap on the leaves and stems. 

Step

2

Spray a strong jet of water directly on to the affected area of the plant. The stream washes the insects off. This is the easiest way to control mealybugs. 

Step

3

Spray with a soap/oil mixture if the water alone doesn't do the job. Mix 1 tsp. insecticidal soap, 1/2 tsp. horticultural oil, and 1 quart water in a spray bottle. There are also numerous chemical products available for the control of mealybugs. 

Step

4

Use rubbing alcohol and a cotton swab to treat minor infestations. Dab the rubbing alcohol directly onto the insects. 

Step

5

Try purchasing and releasing a natural predator called mealybug destroyer (Cryptolaemus montrouzieri) for serious infestations. Place the mealybug destroyers directly on the infested plant. 

Step

6

On an ongoing basis, attract other types of predatory insects, such as parasitic wasps (Leptomastix dactylopii), that will consume and control mealybugs. Grow their favorite plants such as dill, fennel, coreopsis and brightly colored flowers near the mealybug-prone plants.

for the whitefly you could try a simple homemade remedy

mix 1 tablespoon dishwashing liquid detergent with 1 cup of cooking oil; add 1 to 2.5 teaspoons of this solution to 1 cup of water, spray onto plants every 10 days

or a slightly more potent version with some garlic or other botanicals as discussed earlier in this thread starting here relevant post

or try a commercial neem spray which will take time but disrupt the breeding cycle

cheers Jandtaa

Edited March 16, 2009 by jandtaa

[loong 2,446]

It could well be the mealy bug that I have a problem with, definitely not the whitefly.

Thanks for the advice.

When I don't have too many, Ipick them off and crush them by hand, but at times this is impossible and I pull up the plant and bury it

[soidog2 474]

Welcome to the new organic sub-forum Soidog2 !!

Thanks for sharing the pics !! Please share any info you have on growing avocado using organic methods and keep us updated on the progress (after 10 years exciting times no doubt !!)

may your flowers all bear fruit

Jandtaa 

Thanks, I have a question for you.

In my garden there are Cherimoyas, Oranges, Star Fruit, Grapes , Tomatoes, Hot peppers, Lemons, Mangoes, Durian, Figs, Papaya and the list goes on.

My biggest pest is the fruit fly, Lays eggs in the young fruit resulting in total loss sometime.

I do grow fruit commercially and know how to get rid of it, I’d rather not use chemicals in my garden.

Is there anything organic I can use to combat this annoying pest ?

Regards

[teletiger 382]

I am somewhat surprised to hear of weaver ants being described as a pest. One of, if not the, best natural (organic) pesticides around. 'And they're free Save you heaps of work and time. If you are having problems with the ants at the base of the tree it's because your tree is overpopulated. They need to be culled twice a year. Call in the ant-egg man. Every district has got 1 or 2. In S. China it's a cottage industry, inoculating 4/5 year old orchards with ants.

I've never seen or heard of a problem with pollinating bees etc. All trees in our mango grove are populated with ants and come flowering time the whole place is humming.

They rarely cause problems for me.....driving the tractor through the tamarind orchard one morning I knocked an overhead branch, resulting in a whole bunch of the little blighters landing on the back of my neck In my haste to get off the tractor I grabbed the exhaust pipe (yes, yes Lickey, you can get up now.....and stop that inane giggling )

Inoculation is a fairly easy task. Leave a carrier bag or 2 with some old fish inside at the base of a populated tree. Within an hour the bags will be full. Transfer them to the base of the tree you want populated. If you can hang the bags in the tree all the better, if not, a bamboo pole or 2 from the bags up into the tree will suffice.

If you want to do a whole orchard, just do 10% of the trees (as above), then hang slim bamboo poles between all the trees.

These insects are not a pest and your patience with them will be rewarded.

Regards.

[jandtaa 10]

Hi folks

Don or Drtreelove as you may know him is a certified arborist with the International Society of Tropical Foresters and has a special interest in Integrated Pest Management .He has been kind enough to share an article published on this subject in the Chiang Mai Mail in 2003 with us, giving his professional take on the matter. You can find the PDF here Jandtaas docs-article on IPM and plant health care well worth a read !!

cheers Don 

J

[mikejphuket 16]

I have avocado trees flowering as well, exciting time for sure. I am having a problem with ants eating the flowers, trying to source wood vinegar in Phuket to try spraying on trees (well diluted)

[jandtaa 10]

Hi Mike welcome to the organic forum  !!

Here's a link to making your own wood vinegar wood vinegar production 

A useful product indeed, being both a growth stimulant and an insect repellant that does not appear to harm beneficial insects !! It is also a by product of producing bio-char see this thread bio-char posts 

cheers J

[mikejphuket 16]

Thanks Jandtaa- especially for all the work involved with getting this forum going. I had the link already, now looking for some plans on how to build small unit- there is a group of self- sufficient- ers in Phuket that I am getting to know.

Thanks again, Mike

Hi Mike welcome to the organic forum !!

Here's a link to making your own wood vinegar wood vinegar production

A useful product indeed, being both a growth stimulant and an insect repellant that does not appear to harm beneficial insects !! It is also a by product of producing bio-char see this thread bio-char posts

cheers J

[jandtaa 10]

Hi folks just picked up this link from a post in the general farming forum non chemical control of insect pests in the tropics

cheers J

[jandtaa 10]

Welcome to the new organic sub-forum Soidog2 !!

Thanks for sharing the pics !! Please share any info you have on growing avocado using organic methods and keep us updated on the progress (after 10 years exciting times no doubt !!)

may your flowers all bear fruit

Jandtaa 

Thanks, I have a question for you.

In my garden there are Cherimoyas, Oranges, Star Fruit, Grapes , Tomatoes, Hot peppers, Lemons, Mangoes, Durian, Figs, Papaya and the list goes on.

My biggest pest is the fruit fly, Lays eggs in the young fruit resulting in total loss sometime.

I do grow fruit commercially and know how to get rid of it, I'd rather not use chemicals in my garden.

Is there anything organic I can use to combat this annoying pest ?

Regards

Hi SD2

Sorry It's Taken so long (just been re-reading some threads and found I hadn't replied)

Herbal extract for use on fruit fly

also came across a recipe to use in bait traps

1 litre water

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon bakers yeast

1 tablespoon Vegemite

1 cup Urine

Mix ingredients and let stand for five days before

using. Change every week.

Hope it helps, If you try it please let us know if it's effective as the missus has been buying all sorts of fruit tree seedlings over the past weeks.

[jandtaa 10]

Hi Guys

Been researching into pest control of the cucumber beetle as I intead to grow a fair quantity of curcubits in the autumn and have had plant damage from the little critters in the kitchen garden previous years. It's not so much the damage to the leaves (although they can interfere with pollination by eating stamens in the flowers) but the bacterial disease they spread that is the problem. Seems that a neem oil spray will work as an anti-feedant and I posted in the companion plants thread abot intercropping curcubits with rat-tailed radish. Have now come across a biological control; The wolf spider !!

David H. Wise and co-workers in the department of entomology at the University of Kentucky thoroughly investigated spider predation of cucumber beetles (Snyder and Wise, 2000, Williams et al., 2001 and Williams and Wise, 2003). Wise found that both striped and spotted cucumber beetles reduce their feeding rate and emigrate from cucurbit plants in the presence of the large wolf spiders Hogna helluo and Rabidosa rabida. Spider presence reduced plant occupancy of diabroticine beetles by 50 percent. Curiously, adult female beetles are far more responsive to the presence of wolf spiders and alter their behavior to avoid capture. Consequently, males were 16 times more likely than females to be killed by R. rabida in one experiment; only 5 percent of males survived a two-day exposure to H. helluo in a second experiment. In general, populations of predaceous spiders and ground beetles can be enhanced through habitat modification using straw mulch (Snyder and Wise, 1999), straw shelters (Halaj et al., 2000) and beetle banks (Master, 2003).

So next time the missus wants to give one the old flip-flop treatment rescue the little bugger and pop him in your veg patch !! 

cheers J

[RPCVguy 474]

Welcome to the new organic sub-forum Soidog2 !!

Thanks for sharing the pics !! Please share any info you have on growing avocado using organic methods and keep us updated on the progress (after 10 years exciting times no doubt !!)

may your flowers all bear fruit

Jandtaa

Thanks, I have a question for you.

In my garden there are Cherimoyas, Oranges, Star Fruit, Grapes , Tomatoes, Hot peppers, Lemons, Mangoes, Durian, Figs, Papaya and the list goes on.

My biggest pest is the fruit fly, Lays eggs in the young fruit resulting in total loss sometime.

I do grow fruit commercially and know how to get rid of it, I'd rather not use chemicals in my garden.

Is there anything organic I can use to combat this annoying pest ?

Regards

I've not made it through this whole post yet, but wanted to show how we are handling the fruit flies. Basically needed to do something to curb the growth while the natural predators could catch up with a surge. Use old coke and water bottles and cut a small "door" onto two sides. Suspend a cotton ball dabbed with scented bait over a pool of liquid dishwashing soap. Hang the traps in areas heavily affected. The result was amazing at trapping hundreds of the flies per bottle in the pool at the bottom. Our peppers, tomatoes, and gourds are all doing much better now.

[jandtaa 10]

Hi RPVCguy

I did post a recipe I found for a bait to be used in this type of trap a couple of posts ago but have yet to try it. Is it similar to the bait that you use ? please can you share your recipe with us seeing that it has proved effective for you  !!

cheers for now J

[samuijimmy 28,158]

Looks like everyone has "spaded away" on this forum! There must be more "gardeners" out there with questions?

There are a number of great links listed throughout the posts, here oh boy! need more time in a day to get through them all

But slowly I have been trying to gather "recipes" for Pest controls" especially on vegetables, which for the first time in my life have been trying to grow... I have been a professional horticulturist .... most of my working life, so my Thumb is pretty green.... and my success rate of growing "ornamentals" has been good.... the garden may turn into a display of flowers & shrubs!

Now that I am retired & living on Koh Samui with almost an acre of usable land, I been trying many different veggies, some successful.... but most not....

The blessed bugs attack the water melons just as they about ready, the pumpkin squash, get a attacked, just as they start to develop from the flower stage Trying to grow Tomatoes here in Samui, seems to be a waste of time... Some of the problems here, stems from the fact it does not cool down enough at night... those of you in the northern parts of the country are lucky in that respect... Some plants do need those cooler night temperatures to succeed! (That's my theory anyway!.... )

I tried the lemon grass recipe the other week, added a few chillies for good measure! and let sit for a few days & sprayed the squash & most ornamental plants that get chewed around the garden... sadly the pumpkins new development from flowers are still getting attacked by a small worm... Obviously something is laying it's eggs at the end of the flower stage.... (any ideas, what insect it is?)...

The big problem here on Samui is finding stuff, I printed off the Thai word for Borax (that was useful!) and took it to several stores that I thought may sell borax, but alas no one has it ... that I have found yet...(anybody know?) I even found an off the main road shop, near Nanthon, that sold all kinds of Chemicals ( it's quite horrifying to see what is sold here in Thailand, still) But they did not have either...

My Thai neighbours have tried helping me too, I showed the Thai word for the Neem tree, which to my surprise grows all over the island, now to figure out how & when to make a "potion" and from which part of the plant...(more reading!)

I now have a Neem tree seedling growing in the garden,.... yanked out of the ground by neighbours ten year old boy... who has been a wealth of knowledge to me (an amazing kid, so enthusiastic and knows his stuff too... how to make "Babies" as he calls it... making cuttings to everyone else! )... to checking every thing before going to school... if there is something amiss, I sure hear about it... very amusing, but it great to find that sort of thing in someone so young.... I hope it lasts!

A picture of a Water Melon, this insect happened to all of them, days before they where ready to pick ....