How would you contain the gas? Would that require building a tent around the plant? How long would that need to be in place? Would that treatment be cost effective?

Keep in mind that there are only about 8,000 insect pests out of some 8,000,000 insect species and many can be controlled by making the soil plants grow in a good healthy soil that will grow strong and healthy plants that are better able to withstand these those baddies. Also keep in mind that spraying poisons, to kill the baddies, will also kill off the beneficial insects needed to help control the baddies.

The objective in organic growing should not be to find the another way to kill insects but to find out how to keep them under control without harming others.

kimmq is kimmsr

You could take plants that are in containers and place them in another specialized tank container that would be pressure regulated to about 8PSI the gas could be Vacuum pumped out and recycled or you could bag a plant grown in a five gallon plastic bucket or you could go so far to create a green house that is sealed (Would require human safety precautions)

Neem oil works well to repel bugs but I

was just curious to see if this gassing method had ever been tried I have had the idea for a long time and have read a lot of magazines and books but I have never heard of any body trying it.

Seems like it might be helpful on a space exploration application.

I haven't done any tests myself so I don't know how effective it might be I did figure out how to save the earth worms by applying a mild electric shock and driving them to the surface.

Bugs have a cycle, break that cycle and you stop the bugs, preemptive gassing might achieve that goal and I consider it totally natural and Organic.

Might be able to create a large amount of gas from air by burning off the Oxygen and possibly adding Carbon Dioxide to the mix.

I have heard of putting dry ice (solid carbon monoxide) into "critters" holes, then covering the hole, in order to kill the critters by depriving them of oxygen.

https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&q=%22dry+ice%22+moles+holes

https://www.google.com/#newwindow=1&q=%22dry+ice%22+rodents+holes

...dry ice (solid carbon monoxide)...

No. That would be pretty dangerous.

Dry ice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dry ice, sometimes referred to as "cardice" (chiefly by British chemists), is the solid form of carbon dioxide.

Carbon Monoxide comes from the exhaust pipes of cars (Not Electric Cars of course.) As we well know plants

"Breathe" Carbon Dioxide the way we humans breathe Oxygen.

Thank You for posting a response to my question. I wasn't thinking specifically of "Animal" pests like rodents, raccoons, deer,etc but in a closed sealed situation it could help there as well. I have considered the idea of sealed outdoor cloches.

I wonder how long a bunch of Aphids, horn worms, or white flies would last in a Cloche or green house after an hour of gassing? The world may never know.

How about large plastic tents that slide over pastures that are infested with Army worms? Still the fear of new techniques might cancel out the innovation.

I would suspect that rather than "fear of new techniques" cost would be much more of an inhibition.

kimmq is kimmsr

It apparently works well on rats. Cities are tossing chunks of dry ice into rat burrows to kill them by asphyxiation. Cheap, way safer than poisoning them.

What you need to do first is establish the concentration of CO2 that will kill the pests, and the length of time needed. Then expose plants to that level for that time and see if the plants are injured.

For small areas, it might be a viable method.