Baking Soda: This homemade remedy is easy and inexpensive to make, and very effective at preventing powdery mildew. Mix together 3 tablespoons of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), 1 tablespoon of Murphy's Oil Soap (or light horticultural oil) and 1 gallon of water. Spray a fresh batch of the mixture on the tops and bottoms of leaves every 7 to 10 days. Because oil combined with the heat of the sun can damage plant tissues, it's wise to test the solution on a few leaves before using it in large quantities. I originally 'Binged' this site's recipe when I first got PM last year, in my vegetable gardens. It works, and you can't get a much cheaper solution than baking soda. Murphy's Soap makes it adhere to the leaves, and is cheaper and easier to find than horticultural oil. Any basic compost tea will work, as well, when foliar-fed.
This is very interesting! I read alot on this site and have been battling with fungus gnats in my first grow, probably due to the low quality organic soils and composts I used, but we live and we learn! I have just treated my soil and leaves with Neem Oil, the leaf treatment also using some dishsoap, and this seems to have worked fantastically, and as preventative measures for future outbreaks i covered the top of the soil with sand and placed a sticky strip down the middle of the cabinet, however for my next run this may be very helpful! I am just wondering if anyone else has found this to be an effective ongoing deterant to insects and specifically gnats? I will treat my soil with neem before the grow next time however I continually read in posts made by lumperdawgz about neem seed meal being helpful as ongiong prevention but I have no access to such a resource! If mixing used coffee grounds can provide the same benefit with no ill effect to the plants, fungal or bacterial colonies in the soil than that would be amazing! Please, if anyone can provide definitive advice that would be amazing!!
A couple things work well on gnats larva (the larva are the worst): Neem cake or meal. Mosquito dunks or bits. I burn through both neem and mosquito bits, so I am trying to grow less plants. Like Maina's journal- one plant is just as productive as four in a 4x4 space. then you can just kill the larva with spinosad. make sure they're all dead before you transplant to a larger container or it will just get worse. for the adults use sticky traps or a sugar & soap water dish (they dive right into it i use method brand 'sweet water' scented works real well)
thought I'd update. I don't have more than 10 gallons of medium among several plants but there must be billions (ok maybe just between five hundred to a thousand or 2) larva in the medium. they fly right into my face. So I stopped watering my other house plants that are part of the problem. Angel plant, ficus, various grassy shrubs, a christmas plant, 2 money trees, and about 35 christmas plant cuttings. At least for the cactus this may be OK. But one thing i'm thinking is, The larva are eating... the plants roots so they won't go away until the plants are dry. then for the larva i remove the top layer that comes up when I soak them with spinosad. monitoring and increased concentration. i'm looking at 32 oz mosquito bits on amazon. and this for future reference... SpringerLink - Parasitology Research, Volume 99, Number 4 well a chart on the link shows it easily. Granted Sciaridae isn't on the list but for now i'll assume aegypti are most similar because i know how to kill them (with bits/dunks). The plants looking useful: camphor, thyme, lemon, cedarwood, frankicense, dill, myrtle, juniper, black pepper, verbena, helichrysum, and sandalwood. These are only the ones the authors highlighted. It would be interesting to consider other plants too for sciaridae, like the violet, basil cinnamon, broad leafed eucalyptus and geranium. at the same time one thing about the study I am skeptical of is they are measuring oils, that may differ in effects as larvacide from the same plant's fermented extracts. here's a quote that explains lavender: Lavender oil contains a Ketone called Camphor (also found in the mint family, Laurel and Rosemary). The level of Camphor varies widely between the culinary cultivars vs. the medicinal ones. On average, culinary Lavenders have very low levels of Camphor - 0.90% whereas medicinal lavenders are 13% with some specific hybrids higher yet. Rosemary, Oregano (both types), Cilantro have even higher levels of Camphor so you might have some other options to look at. I've had good success with Lavender brews, Rosemary and especially Cilantro. Toss in some semi-rotted garlic cloves, red pepper flakes and take it down to 2.8 pH and you'll have a complete kill zone. There are a wide number of compounds besides Camphor in Lavender. The main one is Eucalyptol (26%) also found in Bay Leaves, Tea Tree, Sweet Basil, Wormwood, Rosemary, Sage and of course, Eucalyptus oil The company where you purchased the botanical powders carry both the culinary and medicinal Lavender oils. "Spike" is the big one in the medicinal category. Many hybrids include this plant's genetics. HTH I guess the camphor is what makes lavender smell so strongly. It should be pretty easy to tell the difference between culinary and medicinal lavender because medicinal lavendar contains far more camphor and will smell at least four times as strong. there are other plants to consider like wild ginger, lemongrass, and probably more! and this kind of... Document Search zaatar and croom... powerful arab spice one thing i'll leave off on sciaridae- Diatom Earth, it doesn't affect them. OK! last edit: Sticky pads work well but if you want to DIY I found yellow masking tape really effective for over a month a piece of tape sitting in my garden got covered with gnats. They just like landing on it and it catches them pretty well. Not as bright or sticky as the purchased ones but OK for free.
Thanks for contributing. I use pyrethrin in case of aphids (in veg) once or twiceWhen flowering, I don't spray anything. Also the more sun the less problems. Always use an airy soil mix to get a strong plant with a strong root system. I use Dankohzee's soil mix. Also red hot peppers in water for 10 days (you can addgarlic but not nec.) + a few soap drops is organic and works. Also have 1 plant per container/hole to avoid aphids and others. Also some plants will be untouched and some more attacked, naturally. Aphids aren't that tough and die with pyrethrin. Use the organic red pepper spray if you can spray more often, it also is very effective. Always apply in evening or morning. Good luck.
After reading all these great, natural tips I feel like a jerk-off for asking my question, but I'm a curious jerk-off, so I'd like to know if anyone has used a product called Garden Safe Fungicide3 by Schultz? It says it's OMRI approved and very safe to coat all your veggies and flowers. I have a bottle, but would like to hear if anyone has any experience with it or not. Thanks for your time.
You could make yourself cool curious dude by doing a google search for the msds sheet on that product and then post the link here. Help us to help you.
oddly enough it's not listed on their web-site...everything I find about it says it's basically a neem-oil product. All Products
LD, or anyone. Could some of the organic pesticides like captain jacks or bti be cultured (Like we do with lacto b or em1) in the grow room? MIW
MI W That's a really good question. The situation as it stands now is that the technology is co-owned by Elanco and Eli Lilly. They license companies to buy the actual cultures that end up in products like Comfortis, Captain Jack's Dead Bug Brew, Monterey Lawn & Garden and a slew of others. It would seem logical to me anyway that you'd have to have a sample of the actual culture, i.e. unadulterated. That's just an opinion of course. The more I use the Captain Jack's product the more I'm impressed. Tweaking the water to kelp meal tea proved to be a benefit. I also added some neem seed meal to the kelp meal tea and then added organic Aloe Vera to the mix prior to spraying. Spinosad definitely works....... LD
Spinosad definitely works....... Good to know. I bought some but have yet to use it. I've got some EWC with frozen fugus gnats, (11F degrees last night) I'll try it on them at some point. The flower box is on auto now at 7+ weeks in flower and the cuts get a weekly neem spray, so as you might imagine, not much to do.....MIW
MI W So here's another update on the Spinosad Caper. I started out with a concentrate product called Captain Jack's Deadbug Brew which is pretty much sold through the grow store industry. Monterey Garden Products has the exact same concentrate and it's sold at mainstream nurseries, farm stores and nursery suppliers in this area. With a 33% price drop. The mixing rate is 4 oz. to 1 gallon of water. These products are only available in quart bottles and the lower price is $24.00 so it's going to cost you $3.00 per gallon. But it works and it works better than I originally thought and that probably has to do with the way in which this bacteria works once it's ingested by the insect. The advantage here, perhaps, is that this isn't like neem at all. The active compounds in neem are exactly that - plant compounds. Spinosad is a cultured-fermented bacteria. Since there are no compounds then you wouldn't have the residue issues if an application was required late in the flowering cycle. It also doesn't require an emulsifier like neem or karanja oils. But it costs $3.00 per gallon to apply. A gallon of organic neem is something like $80.00 and with S&H let's say that it was $100.00 delivered. The application rate is 0.5 ounces to 1 gallon of water so 1 gallon of neem oil would make 256 gallons or $.26 per gallon. The other consideration is that Spinosad contains absolutely no fungicide properties whereas neem is going to give you both pesticide and fungicide properties. Still - having a bottle around 'just because' is probably a good idea. It definitely kills mites without damaging the plant's leaves in any way. Nothing. Zero. Monterey Garden Spinosad Concentrate is the product (quart) that had the best pricing I was able to come up with. HTH LD