Hello all
I didn’t like the idea, so I haven’t used any up until now. But I lost my entire grape crop last year due to beetles skeletonizing all the leaves. And aphids are probably going to make a poor peach crop this year.
My wife went to the largest store in the area, and if my translation is correct, the guy said everybody uses these two products mainly for pests: Permethrin for peaches; Fenitrothion for grapes. It’s diluted 1000x in water spray. Don’t get it on the fruit, which should be OK because they’re bagged.
Anybody know anything about this? I don’t want to end up everybody getting cancer or something.
To feel better, I’m telling myself I’ll probably be using a lot less poisons that a commercial farmer would here.
The damage is already done on the peaches, but the beetles haven’t shown up yet – probably within a couple weeks. So I’m hoping this will knock them out.
Acephate was another general pesticide name that came up for grapes.
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In all my searches and watching discussion here Fenitrothion has never come up as a fruit-labeled insecticide. It is an organophosphate, but must be sort of like imidan or malathion in human toxicity if it is still being sold.
But I have no idea… Do they put labels on pesticides in Japan? The format is probably different than here in the US. I guess go by what the label says. If it says the aphids and beetles are treated by the respective product then they probably will be effective.
Permethrin should kill aphids. No idea on the organophosphate for beetles. I think folks here say that imidan is not as effective on Japanese beetles, but that is apples-to-oranges since they are two different chemicals. Carbaryl (Sevin) is the gold standard for raining death upon japanese beetles.
edit: This day and age if you follow the label the fruit should be pretty safe, I think. The most dangerous is the concentrate, and make sure that you follow the PPE requirements and be careful when mixing the product.
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Thanks a lot for your help. I bought some for the grapes. The tradename on the bottle is “Sumichion” or Sumithion, licensed in Japan as pesticide #4962. I believe this is the same as Fenitrothion?, but it’s difficult with the translations. It’s advertised as a broad range pesticide that will also take out Japanese beetles. I would like to find the one you mentioned, but I got a feeling it’s going to be really difficult to track down whether it’s available or not.
As you mentioned, in this day and age I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Pesticides are all carefully labeled with government ID numbers here.
Maybe I need to accept pesticides more? But I guess that’s a topic for another discussion. Thanks again.
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Well, I’ve been checking it regularly since I applied it, and holy cow! Not only no beetle trouble, no bugs of any kind on any of the grapevines, which is unheard of this time of year. Seems to have really done the trick.
Today I saw 2 tree frogs on it, and 2 Japanese beetles on some new growth which I picked off by hand. This time last year it was all half destroyed.
I sprayed a little bit that I had extra left over on the Peachtree last week. If it did anything, I can’t notice. Peach Tree looks absolutely dreadful. Supposed to be harvesting in two weeks, but I can’t imagine I’ll be getting anything. I suppose I could buy the peach pesticide and try it out, as I’m gonna need to buy it for next year anyway.
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