Ladybugs! Every year we order a lot of ladybugs and let them loose. They do a great job and stay around as long as there is something for them to eat, not just in the vegetable garden but terrific on the roses, too. I can usually buy some at my local garden center at the beginning of the season, but also have had good luck ordering through the mail from www.gardensalive.com. To me they're worth every penny and fun to watch!

Lou

I tried the tomato leaf recipe (I use a very concentrated one, with one part leaves to one part water). I think it works great! Of course, just like any other sprayed solution, it will never be 100% efficient as there is just no way you can coat the entire plant in it and you surely miss many leaves and stems in the process. At first I thought it didn't work, because I checked the next day and the little buggers were still there, but when I knocked the leaf gently, they fell off. So, maybe the aphids you see are not even alive.

As for ladybugs, I can confirm they work very well. I catch ladybugs in my front yard and then just place them on my tomatoes (and whatever else has a few aphids too many). I often find individuals with distinctive markings (e.g., a missing or crushed wing) several days later still munching away on the same plant. If food is readily available, ladybugs really stick to the same spot. The problem with ladybugs seems to be to get the amount right. In my case, I think I don't have enough of them to do a good clean-up. But I also read that if there are too many for the food your plants offer, they tend to migrate to places where there are more bugs to munch on. I have tried to find actual numbers to no avail.

I guess it would be about knowing approximately how many aphids you have in the spot where you are releasing/placing ladybugs, factoring in how fast they reproduce and how many new aphids each aphid spawns, then figuring out how many aphids a ladybug would eat in a day to figure out how many ladybugs in all you would need. This is very complicated and the numbers in the calculation method would all be very approximate with a wide error margin. Maybe releasing ladybugs in small batches, monitoring and releasing again to adjust would work better than just releasing a great number of them once...

Neem oil works great. It suffocates them so you don't have to wait for them to starve like with other pests.

Neem oil works differently than suffocating them. It works on a hormonal level and disrupts their life. They won't eat, drink, mate etc. Maybe there are things added to some neem oil that will suffocate them.

gicore do some research before correcting the correct. Neem suffocates aphids and other soft bodied insects. They were dead the following day. This is 70% neem. It effects different insects in different ways.

http://www.discoverneem.com/neem-oil-insecticide.html

and the other 30% is?

Read the article.

So... I read the artilce. What is the other 30% comprised of? I get what it does, and how it works. But is it just dilluted with water?

Thanks

It just says 30% other ingredients. If it was some kind of soap or other oil, I'm sure it would say. It's Greenlight brand.

hi, i took a couple cloves of garlic, smashed, a cap and a half full of murphy's oil soap, and a cap full of canola oil, then added a quart of water, let sit in the sun for about an hour or so, then you're ready to go. the longer it sits the stronger the garlic gets.

it's worked fabulously for me. i'll give a spray, then do my best to get rid of the bodies (i'm anal that way), then spray a bit more after i've rinsed the bodies off with water. they'll stay gone for weeks at a time.

hope that helps

angela

I see nothing in your link what the other 30% is. I can bring up LOTS of links stating what I said. Maybe neem oil works differently on aphids than other bugs but I guess I'm just a poor researcher :P

100% Neem is very difficult to find but worth the search. Unfortunately Neem is normally cut with mineral oil if it isn't 100%

I did a search and found 100% Neem Oil from a company in California, (link below). It's not cheap but not real expensive either. Hope this helps...

Greg
Nevada

Here is a link that might be useful: 100% Neem Oil

It's not that hard to find and this ad even says it does NOT hurt bees or ladybugs so there's a host of others it will NOT hurt.

http://homeharvest.com/insectspraysneembased.htm

Sorry I was just reading another thread where hoodat was saying it kills bees and wasps.

Okay, got my neem oil. Yay!

I have noticed holes in my mesclun, lettuce and chard as well. Can I spray these with neem too?? I assume it's some kind of bug, beetle or worm doing the damage. Anything I can't spray this stuff on??

Thanks!

Regarding Neem oil, if it isn't 100% and it's marketed for garden use, the additional % is often an insecticidal soap. Mine, for example, is 85% Neem and 15% potassium-based soap.

Both oil and soap have an insecticidal effect of their own, hence all the home-made soap and home-made oil spray recipes out there on the web, as well as numerous commercial products based on these ingredients. So it's pretty hard to know which ingredient is killing the aphids.

Also, for those who like to spray widely using a Neem blend, or who add soap to help the oil disperse, insecticidal soap preparations are considered safe for adult lady beetles and bees, but can be toxic (depending on recipe and rate of application) for some other beneficials eg. predatory mites, lacewing larvae, and parasitic wasps including Aphidius wasp species, which attack aphids.

I don't know of any plant it can't be sprayed on.

What would be the best time of day to apply soapy neem oil? In the hot afternoon or during the cool dawn?

I have a certain weed in my garden, I don't know it's name. It can get rather tall and the leaves are
rather spikey, so I hesitate to pull on it without gloves. It's flowers turn into white puff balls, and fly everywhere. I will never be totally rid of it. I have noticed that the aphids prefer these flower heads above all else in my garden, yea! Eat up suckas.

I am organic, have the weeds and bugs to prove it. I am just thrilled that it all is balancing out somewhat. I also have lots of ladybugs, spiders and bee's to help with bug patrol. As long as they stay outside, we are all cool. I have saved many a bee from the water bucket, how weird am I.

I have over two acres that I am trying to turn into a farm. I am the sole farm hand, and just can't pull all of the weeds. I refuse to buy pesticide or insecticide, I have started to buy some fertilizers, a huge change for me. You just cannot imagine the smile on my face when the lightbulb went on. The bugs went for the weed instead of the broccoli. I wasnÂt a failure because I had weeds.

So in conclusion, I recommend this weed, tho I donÂt know itÂs name.

Dusk or dawn