Sooo, the reason for my post and the accompanying link is because NaturesGoodGuys sells pest-specific predators. Two years ago I spent a fortune on some nematodes that were supposed to attack fungus gnats … and Nothing. I also tried the yellow fungus gnat sticky traps, but apparently fungus gnats are colorblind because they only randomly jumped on the sticky traps, along with anything else in the vicinity, including spiders and ladybugs.
Thanks tho for everyone’s interest and posts, I learned a lot, and hopefully so will those who visit this thread in years to come.
FWIW, I’ve been saying for years: Dog sh!t and arsenic are 100% natural, but that doesn’t mean they are good to eat.
THANK YOU for your post, jumping spiders are my favorites!! Altho, I “kidnap” them from inside (and everywhere else I find them) and put them in my garden.
Her name is Patricia and she watched me every day for a week but until about a day ago, she’s left her post. My husband said she might be hungry so i pulled some bugs from the Katchy and grabbed a grape for her lol. But I haven’t been able to find her. Her tree was the Pixie Mandarin
Leaf miners are very difficult. I’ve found that Spinosad works pretty well to kill them. Spinosad is produces by a soil bacterium and is most effective against caterpillars and other similar larvae. I don’t know how the commercial stuff is produced, but it seems to move through the leaf surface to reach the miners. Spinosad is one of the ingredients in Captain Jack spray, but I’ve found it cheaper sold by itself.
Sounds like your garden ecosystem is quite out of balance. I do live in a Western state where growing fruit is easier. I had no negative effects when I used Neem oil. I don’t think I have leaf miners. Keeping it in a healthy balance prevents the need for harsh chemicals.
I consider this to be the great myth of organic growers, that balance means conditions that favor our species. Balance is in the mind of the beholder based on what favors them.
It is easy to feel in balance when you live where it doesn’t rain during the growing season and you have access to water from the ground or far away.
When we garden we grow varieties that have been developed to favor our species- they are often far less hardy than the wild plants they were derived from. We also live in a world where pests cross oceans- so you could say the entire globe is in a state of eco-imbalance.
I have fought nature to achieve my living for 55 years. Being a successful gardener is trying to manipulate nature to your advantage and maintaining a steady imbalance in ones own favor. Nature is your enemy and friend.
Just another opinion from someone who spends his life growing species and varieties of fruit in the humid region that were originally developed in drier climates. Some of my worst pests have arrived here in the last decade and defy current organic solutions. For example, very healthy apple trees frequently succumb to apple leaf blotch here- a disease that Cornell had never seen on apple trees 8 years ago. Don’t get me started on peach scale. I saw that for the first time 5 years ago and it’s spread the same way as ALB.
We have plenty of dedicated and talented organic farmers and gardeners around- none who I would consider successful orchardists using their methods. At the very least, the successful ones compromise by using synthetic fungicides.
The poster attempted accepted organic methods to bring balance to the garden at a pretty high expense without success. I also prefer to use organic methods, or at least, least toxic methods and usually don’t need synthetic help to grow vegetables here, but sometimes having a “balance” that allows reasonable production is nearly impossible to achieve without modern chemistry.
In my own garden sometimes whitefly gets so bad on my kale and collards they suck all the sugar out of the leaves and turns them into cardboard. I have a synthetic chemical that brings whitefly under control for the season with a single app that is easy on beneficials. I don’t eat the leaves that have been sprayed and only those that form after the fact because I can afford to waste those leaves.
However, in my orchard I could not get nearly the results I want without some synthetic intervention. Fruit like peaches and plums are nothing like native fruits here. I don’t need to spray blueberries or brambles with anything- although brambles tend to die out from viral infections after a few years for which there is no treatment- even native types, unless they bear on same year canes. So far, I haven’t needed synthetics to produce hardy (mostly native) persimmons and mulberries either.
I am just not going to spray chemicals, harsh pesticides, on my familys food.
I just cant do it.
I will spray a little Capt Jack Dead Bug brew occasionally…(Spinosad) and will use other organic methods like coddling moth traps.
I have also made some changes in my orchard to help… removed all peaches a few years back… eliminated 4 apple trees last year that got covered in fire blight and had fruit riddled with bug bites.
I have 3 apple trees left… hopefully less of the problem trees will be easier to focus on and manage better.
In the past 2 years have added 10 persimmon varieties and 5 mulberries. 2 Muscadine vines etc… focusing on no spray, low maintenance fruit going forward.
And where does the majority of the fruit in your diet come from? I love berries and persimmons, but crave a much wider range of fruit whose high quality relies on my growing it myself. I love the things I pull off my trees as much as you love your beef and venison.
You have a long ways to go in terms of exploring what apples you can grow there and avoid FB. Where you live it is much harder to grow stonefruit than where I am because the weather takes more radical swings, but I have customers who only have to add a synthetic fungicide to Surround to get a great peach, cherry and apricot harvest that they preserve to eat all year long.
However, these people can pay help to do the work, you may not make growing fruit your most important hobby and put a lot more effort, both physical and mental towards your hunting hobby.
There are a lot of serious hobbyists on this forum whose primary recreational focus is growing vegetables and fruit. It’s all about what you most value and what you want to do with your time and your money.
If you don’t want to make a big investment, of course growing native fruit types is the way to go- just plant them and keep the weeds away and spend your time doing other things and let commercial growers provide the fruit you want, but not enough to grow yourself.
@alan … when I am eating fruit (when all things are well on the health front)…
I eat mostly low carb berries… strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. I grow a lot of those. When we are out of home grown… our superwalmart almost always has blueberries blackberries raspberries… or even some low carb melons.
Occasionally my wife and I will split a granny smith apple (low carb apple) or even a small bartlet pear.
Fruit or veggies that are high in carb count… can only be eaten with careful portion control.
I eat no carbs for breakfast, lunch… but for example last night for dinner had a nice ribeye steak, some salmon and about 2 tablespoons of high fat low carb greek yogurt with about a dozen blueberries.
I am keeping my carbs very low right now…
Been battling some not so nice arthritus symptoms this year.
It definately helps.
No carb carnivore… gives me the lowest inflamation markers. I have seen that many times in blood test.
I am trying to add back small amounts of carbs now and taking note on how my symptons change.
When on carnivore for 2 months… i did not need inflimation meds (ibuprofen or alieve) not one time.
After just a few weeks of adding back a few low carb fruit and veggies… i have had to take something for pain/inflimation to make the day managable.
I’ve read many of your comments about the benefits of your diet, and I respect that. I am just trying to focus on the theme of this forum… growing fruit. You are probably the only member that maintains a list of higher and lower carb fruit- I don’t know if that has any health importance to the rest of us.
You are not an expert on what diet most serves our species, only, perhaps, on what serves your own body. Why should that be of special importance to the rest of us? Just saying.
My breakfast this morning was a whole lot of peach slices and blueberries from my freezer with steel cut oats covered with plum sauce and whole milk yogurt and about a TBS of maple syrup. I grew all the fruit, which I have enough of in the freezer to keep me going until there is ripe fruit on the earliest of my trees. I also have a couple hundred pounds of apples in cool storage.
To me, that is what the forum is about, including diets where fruit plays a starring role. Who cares about the rest of the plate- the name of this forum is Growing Fruit.
This could be said about people growing fruit in NY and Florida, having different disease pressures, different fruits which flourish. It doesn’t make it any less compelling. Diversity is the spice of life, diversity of thought seems to be the only diversity which people seem to dislike. I can gather good information from all of you on what diets work for you, to perhaps apply parts of it to my own one day. The same way with people in different climates growing different species is intriguing to me. More ideas the better
Yup, so I’m not going to suggest my particular diet would be good for anyone else, but TN repeats his dietary beliefs again and again and part of my self proclaimed mission here is reducing clutter that I consider boring due to repetition or, sometimes, contradicting current scientific understanding.
There is a point where helpful and useful information passes into the realm of proselytizing and a little bit of that goes a long way. Experts in diet are not likely to endorse TN’s food religion for any region, but I expect most would say that if it works for TN he should stick to it unless he or his doctor figures out something better.
I wonder if his reactions to certain foods are not related to food allergies, he’s never talked about visiting a allergist to explore this possibility. I wouldn’t blame him for not going this route- I’m not sure I could afford to if I was in his situation.
I politely disagree with your execution of this as your post on Australia banning social media is only a topic about maple syrup haha
Things get adjacent topic all the time and sometimes you’re a participant which I have no issue with. I only take exception to you saying your mission is to avoid this, as you also do it when you allow it. Have to be devils advocate on this one haha
I think he harps on it due to being met with heavy criticism in a way a vegetarian is never met with. Doctors unfortunately are very uninformed or misinformed on what a healthy diet looks like. The amount of doctors that are indeed healthy is a vanishingly small percentage. I guess you can use the “do as I say not as I do” approach with them, but it falls on deaf ears to me; not just with doctors but with anyone who doesn’t practice what they preach. With that said I understand as most people don’t react kindly to proselytizing.
I have gone to a lot of trouble to explain what I find different about TN’s frequent injections about his miracle diet to general conversational exchanges that may be intended to be interesting or humorous. I am not a topic fascist and TN is the only one I can think of to which I’ve applied this particular criticism.
If you don’t get it, that’s fine. I hope you enjoy the frequent repetition of the food scripture of TN. He certainly has yet to respond to or even acknowledge my criticism.
Haha I do enjoy it. But I also enjoy the banter of the two of you. Not in a trolling manner either, I find it fun and entertaining; on top of informative.
You are both respectively healthy for your age so I can hope to be as physically fit (or more) when I get there. I find credit in both perspectives.
