i have been thicking of making a batch myself.
Till now my insect pressure has been so low that a garden hose took care of it. So haven’t gone trough the hassle. (yet)
if got a big bag of DE (multiple liters/kg), if you want some i can send it. But it likely costs more to ship to France than to buy a small bottle. But if you can’t find it, I’m happy to send you some in exchange for the shipping costs.
Let’s not forget beneficial vertebrates in our fighting nature with nature. Lizards and frogs feed on insects, including ants. And that takes care of the aphid problem. When I see a lizard positioned upside down on a tree trunk, I know it’s gobbling up the conveyor belt of ants trying to reach the upper thinner branches. I would not want to discourage that from happening by using harmful substances.
There are few frogs and fewer lizards in my location. I fully endorse the idea you are going for though.
It’s likely one of the “build it and they will come” scenarios. I need to put more rock piles and structures for toads to hang out, that’s probably the best I’ll get.
I use poison bait traps. Anytime the synthetic poison is consumed via bait station, I’m in. So much less material is used than when you spray a whole tree, of which, a lot of the poison ends up on the ground. So much, much more poison than what is used in a bait station.
I wonder how much research is done on this because pesticide companies sponsor most research… they want to sell large quantities of pesticide.
However, I applaud the use of tangle trap. Much less environmentally destructive, overall. But I am swamped with work.
I’m getting hit hard by aphids now. My plan is to blast what I can off of my smaller trees and a bit off of my fullest tree just to ease the pressure before releasing the lacewing nymphs and ladybugs. I’m hoping with a fair amount of aphids and the addition of flowering plants they may just stick around to help next year.
My wife buys this at walmart… to keep critters from eating her flowers. It is a ready to use pump spray bottle.
I have used it on aphids on young apples and psillium on persimmons… it wipes them out quick.
Most of mine are the green variety born of flyers. They are pretty suspectable to insecticidal soap. My goal is to eventually lean on the spray less.
Try Neem oil, it works great on aphids. For me it is also 100% effective on saw fly larvae that can defoliate bushes on the currant family in record time. If I’m paying attention I can spot when the saw fly lays the eggs under the leaves, one application and they don’t even hatch.
Best of all it doesn’t affect the good guys.
Harming the good guys is always my bigger concern.
I have neem but I’ve held off on its use. What I’ve read indicated that it will not affect pollinators unless it is directly sprayed on them but it can have a detrimental affect on predatory insects that I’m hoping to boost the numbers of. I’m trying to make the ideal location for lacewings. Growing up lacewings were everywhere. These days I set up lights every so often to take measure of which bugs are in the area and see almost none.
Ladybugs would work too but they are apparently fickle in their devotion to the cause. The addition of flowering plants to the orchard may sway them. I guess we will see.
