I have not used any on my plants but have hauled loads of it for use in paint, caulking compound, even women's make-up. It seems to be a very good filler.

I have used Surround. You have to shake the sprayer or the first plants are very white and the last don't get much of a coating. I used it for stinkbugs. I still saw stinkbugs after I applied it, but it may have helped. It is hard to tell if something works because the year I used it, we got rain and I had to reapply several times. I am getting no rain now. I am going to apply it tomorrow because I already have scorched fruit. Should have thought of that before this hot dry weather. I went from a flood at the end of May to June with no rain to speak of and record heat. This has not been a good year for my tomatoes.

I have a 25-lb. bag of Surround WP that I bought last year and haven't opened. I intended to spray it in advance of the arrival of stinkbugs and grasshoppers this year, and then they showed up in April when I didn't even have all my plants in the ground yet, and we were having fires, and time was short and I couldn't even find time to get my planting done, much less spend time mixing and spraying something. And, I never got around to using it and I still have stinkbugs. The bag of kaolin makes a nice, cushy cat bed apparently, as cats sleep on top of it all the time.

I might try it on fall plantings if I have any fall plantings. With the drought and heat (we hit 106 degrees today), I run outside early in the morning around 5:45 or 6:00 a.m., feed the animals, harvest whatever is ready, talk to the deer, cottontails and purple martins, and run back inside before it is "too hot". Today I found stink bug damage on peppers, but haven't found it on my tomatoes this week. Maybe the insane heat is driving them away.

As for the grasshoppers, I've been using EcoBran for them and am seeing significantly fewer in the treated areas than we had prior to the treatment, and seeing more in untreated areas. I really think it is working and think it will be a great weapon in the battle against the hordes of migrating grasshopppers and locusts that normally strip my plants bare in drought summers. It seems to do a better job on the grasshoppers than the kaolin did when I tried it several years ago, although of course, it should work better since the kaolin is a repellent and the EcoBran is a pesticide. Most repellents only work up to a certain point, and if the pests are hungry enough, they ignore the repellents or overcome their dislike of them or something.

I have used Surround WP before when someone gave me a small amount to try the first year it was on the home gardeners market. It seemed to repel moths from bothering plums, but I didn't spray it on peaches because I feared I wouldn't be able to wash it off the fuzzy skin easily. It seemed to coat the vegetable plants well and that seemed to repel some insects, but I am not convinced it helped with heat stress the way they say it does. Of course, once the heat hits a certain level and no rain is falling, not much does help. I'd say that with temps ranging from 100-106 over the last week or so, there's not much more that will help our garden plants other than some rainfall and some relief from the heat.

If you decide to use Surround WP or any kaolin clay product, I'd suggest you be careful about which plants you spray it on. For example, it is a royal pain to wash it off of snap beans since it sticks to them because of their texture. It is a little easier to wash it off of greasy beans, but with regular snap beans you spend a lot of time hand washing it off of each individual bean. I just don't have time for that.

One problem I have with Surround is I don't like the way it makes the plants look. They look dry and dusty to me, not the pretty green I like to see. Like Helen, I have found you have to really agitate the sprayer to keep the particles of kaolin from settling into the bottom of it while you're spraying. I hate spraying anything at all, so this product probably has one strike against it in that sense.

Maybe next year I'll have one of those perfect years when I'm getting everything done on time, am not running behind and frantically trying to catch up, and have time to do "extra' stuff like mixing up Surround and spraying it. Just because I haven't had one of those years since about 2004 doesn't mean I won't have one next year.

I just ordered Surround with no shipping cost at Gardens Alive. I had to order $50 worth of stuff - not hard to do at GA. I also got Pyola for when I have a serious bug infestation like last year with the striped blister beetle. When I had them they were stripping everything of leaves in a short time. The order came up to about $50 total. I don't know how well Surround works but I think it is harmless; it is not a poison so nothing drops dead immediately. The poison (Pyola) for only for when I give up on other methods.

I saw this program rerun on Oklahoma Gardening today. They were using it on squash, among other things, presumably to deter SBs and SVBs from laying eggs.

Just wondered if anyone had used the kaolin clay product or Surround, and how successful it was, especially if used on Squash. I wouldn't use it on butterfly plants obviously, and I don't know much about drift. I assume it comes in a spray or a powder?
Susan

I think it may annoy the bugs but I don't think it kills them. I have seen stinkbugs walking around with it on their legs healthy as can be. If you spray it early and keep it up bugs might find something more appealing things to eat. I spray after I have a problem and that may not be how to use Surround which is white kaolin clay.