7 dust going the way of stuff that works

[clemsonfor]

Rob, I agree with much of what you posted. However, these kinds of posts often engage a flame war, usually, that just brings down the conversation.

Here's my take. Re-thinking. Folks will need to learn how to better live with insects and control them in new ways to which we have grown unaccustomed. We are now a few generations into this "Better Living Through Chemistry" mindset. It is going to take re-training and new thinking and the offering of good, workable and positive solutions before folks will just abandon the old ways of grabbing pesticides and herbicides.

A lot of posturing on either side won't help much, imho. I find the challenge of learning new ways, new agricultural methods rewarding and stimulating. I am in my second year of organic market vegetable production. I am amazed and am not looking back.

As my friend, one of the nation's leading professional organic farmer says in his book, "We learned to farm this country, partly, from the Native peoples who taught the Pilgrims. We've remembered the corn, but have forgotten the fish".

Best regards,

Ok BP i have a question for you, not trying to be "smart" or anything like that, i really want to know. How do i grow organic squash. I would lov not to have to reapply sevin after everyrain or watering to the stem of the plant. I have lost close to 10 squash plants this year alone, which was all but one or 2 of my total, they are all replanted now and way behind, the few i have left that are mature may still be here with out the sevin i started applying after i noticed the first ones dieing due to the stem borers or squash worms. Nobody i talk to has a big problem with them. I always do and i have had gardens in 3 different places over the last 5 years (when i say 3 places im talking different houses in different towns. If i only lost 1 out or 10 or even 1/7 i would not car id just replant. When i loose a whole crop thats unacceptable. If i were a row crop truck farmer planting 5 acres of the stuff and lost them and had to replant thats months worth of lost income by the time i have to replant and pay to replant. (the things die right as they flower or right before first harvest) And no its not water or other things, i have no trouble growing okra pole beans tomatoes (except for the D@^% neighbors chickens pecking them i finially figured that one out, still haven t seen them but the trail cam is up today, them shooting will beginafter proof) and melons.

 

[bp fick]

Oh, I know you are serious about wanting to improve your squash production, Clemsonfor.

The squash is one of the most difficult to master. I have grown squash and cukes without pesticides, for 2 years now, successfully. That said, it is one of the more difficult challenges when going organic.

There isn't room, on this forum, to go into such a lengthy reply. However, I would recommend many good State Ag Dept studies and recommendations on the subject. Many solid articles have been posted on the web concerning cucumbers, pumpkins and squash production using non lethal chemical methods. Do some googling and reading. You'll be able to tell the quacks from the truth speakers easy enough.

Before making the transition to organic, I "went to school", that is, I read everything I could and interviewed SUCCESSFUL professionals. Not that back yard types cannot and do not contribute, but I wanted a 10-15 years experienced perspective from real farmers and commercial market gardeners.

BTW, there ARE organic pesticides. Seriously. This is a topic many overlook. I don't use them, as I haven't had to and their use is somewhat controversial as well, but just thought I'd throw that out.

 

[Rob-D]

BP,
I'm not trying to start a war, I'm just amazed that we have allowed chemical companies to dictate our lives.

We took DDT off the market because it was very bad, numerous chemical companies and the FDA said it was ok. It wasn't.
If an individual wants to trust a chemical company with their lives that's their business, when what they do affects everyone else and the environment, that's everyone's business.

We want to take a short cut to farming, we want to get rid of pests immediately, well that has its repercussions as DDT and a long list of other chemicals have taught us. In the long run where have we gone and what do we have to show for it?

50% of men over 55 years old have prostate cancer, that's because reproductive systems are the first to get hit by chemicals. The subtle thing is that we get cancer and we think, why me? We have no way of knowing what triggered it, we never think of the Seven we used on our garden. Chemical companies don't want you to make that connection and they have tremendous lobbies to make sure you never do.

In the seventies swordfish was banned in this country and for a good reason, it was high in mercury, that's because chlorinated hydrocarbons (pollution) is cumulative as you move up the food chain it accumulates, swordfish is very high on the food chain. What most people don't know is that tuna is also high on the food chain and had just as much mercury in it as swordfish. The difference was that the tuna lobby was, and still is, very strong. If you think the government and the FDA are going to save you think again. Monsanto owns the government. They are so powerful that they have prevented anyone from testing their pesticides. This is a company that knew PCBs were carcinogens and killing people and hid it. Agent Orange was a defoliate, it did more damage to US troops than the Vietcong!

Chemicals are killing us and destroying the planet. That's not a scared 'tree hugger' talking, that's someone who has done the research.

Rob

 

[Chuck52]

Clemsonfor,

I hear you on the squash. I usually get decent crops of zucchini and yellow squash, but the plants also always die earlier than they should due to squash bugs and the diseases they carry. I used to use Sevin to control the bugs, but in my case I found that the bugs were worst just about the time I had fruit on the plants. I didn't like to dust the squash I was going to pick real soon, so I tried insecticidal soap. That did seem to work pretty well, but I had to look up what was in it before I used it because "insecticidal" didn't sound good to me. Turns out it is basically just soap. Some of the fatty acids in soaps are better than others at damaging the insects, and the so-called insecticidal soaps on the market just contain those fatty acids. You literally can eat them without harm, but they also rinse off, just as you would expect soap to do.

The problem with that for me, though, is that by the time I see the infestation it is too late to prevent all the damage. Those buggers don't just suck the juices, they also spread diseases, and while the soap does kill the bugs, you have to actually hit them with it.

This year I have not yet had an invasion....don't know why. I have some really nice looking squash plants and the flood of zucchini is about to start. I check for the eggs on the underside of the leaves every day, and haven't put anything on the plants yet. I have the soap ready to use when I see them. I was planning to try the diatomaceous earth stuff, too, since one of my organic-type friends swears it works in his garden. I looked for the cheap swimming pool grade and didn't find it yet. The insect grade stuff I found was expensive, and not just the diatoms, but also included some bait. Aside from encouraging beneficial insects, the diatomaceous earth is about the only safe preventative I know of.

Chuck

 

[JimWalch]

HeeHaw noted it was the 10%. Hopefully the 5% will stay on the shelves. Pricewise, the 10% is a better deal for the percentage vs the money. To dust dogs the maker recommends the 5%. The 10% is too strong. I use the 10% around the house and shop and plan to stock up before it sells out.

Remember the days when you could buy those pump sprayers for dusts? Fill the can with the powder and pump the bicycle type pump. Can't find those anymore. They worked pretty good. If any of you know where to get a couple let me know...

Wendallb...you have used the Bayer product? I will buy a bag next time when I go to Lowe's and try it. Sevin dust is the best, though.

This might work for you
Amazon.com: Gilmour D1 1-Pound-Capacity Dry Application Garden Duster: Patio…

 

[Ford850]

HeeHaw noted it was the 10%. Hopefully the 5% will stay on the shelves. Pricewise, the 10% is a better deal for the percentage vs the money. To dust dogs the maker recommends the 5%. The 10% is too strong. I use the 10% around the house and shop and plan to stock up before it sells out.

Remember the days when you could buy those pump sprayers for dusts? Fill the can with the powder and pump the bicycle type pump. Can't find those anymore. They worked pretty good. If any of you know where to get a couple let me know...

Wendallb...you have used the Bayer product? I will buy a bag next time when I go to Lowe's and try it. Sevin dust is the best, though.

I bought a metal pump sprayer at Lehman's Hardware in Kidron OH last year. Outdoors | Gardening | Orchard | Canister Garden Duster - Lehmans.com
They also had the plastic Gilmor style in stock at the store. Check out the link for some great products if you've never seen the place. I bought an excellent hoe there, made locally too. Looking at the site is not as much fun as shopping the store in person but it's still a unique site. I looked for 2 years before finding the dusters there, and a month later found them on the shelf at Lowe's but they hadn't carried them for the years prior to that.

 

[Redbug]

Hey thanks Ford and Jim! They do exist! I will compare and order one. I have been using a large salt shaker, but the duster is the thing to use. It can reach places with a fine dust much better than a shaker. It's odd these things are so hard to come across these days.

 

[Bird]

My dad and his dad used Sevin dust on their gardens. I've never used the dust for anything. And I never thought about using it on a dog. But about 30 years ago, we had a little poodle that got some ticks on her and the vet recommended dipping her in flowable/liquid Sevin, so I mixed it up in a 5 gallon bucket, dipped her in it up to her ears, then sparyed that mix on the back yard, and no more ticks were ever found.

 

[Rob-D]

"You may have thought the problem was monarch butterfly larvae dying when they fed on Bt corn pollen, but it doesn't stop there.

EXCERPT: Milkweeds are the only plants on which monarchs lay eggs... Every monarch on the planet depends on milkweed.

...You used to see milkweeds everywhere... You see them seldom now.

We're eradicating milkweed... Most monarch/milkweed habitat occurs in farmland, vanishing at nearly 3,000 acres a day. The remaining habitat, mostly owned by agribusiness, increasingly grows genetically modified (GM) corn and soybeans. GM crops resist glyphosphate, the active ingredient in RoundUp. Milkweed cannot. The GM switch meant the loss of 80 million acres of monarch habitat...

The monarch and the milkweed will vanish. Everyone knows that economics come before beauty, commerce before conservation. Everyone knows that everything legal is safe.

Or maybe we all don't know this... Maybe we're not certain that GM crops should predominate, playing an unknown role in our children's health. --- "


--- THE MONARCH AND THE MILKWEED---

By Roxana Robinson
The Boston Globe,
September 6 2006


Bee keepers are losing bees at alarming rates, my friend lost all her hives. Albert Einstein said that if we lose the bees man will be dead in three to four years. We losing bats, anyone think we can live without these insect predators?

We pump chickens, cows, beef and lamb full of chemicals and we think we are killing infections but what is happening is our animals are building up resistances to antibiotics so now we are in a constant rat race to keep one step ahead of the diseases we are creating in our labs.

We think our chemicals will give us an easy path to eradicating pests but now the planet is so out of balance that we are losing beneficial insects too that we can't live without.

We see the immediate effect of a pesticide and think we have done some good but all we have done is throw nature more out of balance. Now we have real insect problems because we have made such a mess but we don't see the problems right away, it takes time.

Amphibians (frogs) are what scientists call 'indicators' because the indicate the health of an ecosystem, we have lost 50 to 60% of the amphibians in the rain forest, our rain forests are dying. 2% of this planet is rain forest, we can't live without rain forest.

Chemical companies won't tell you this, they want to make great claims about how they are helping feed the planet but the truth is that in 2008 we produced enouh food to feed 11 billion people, the number of people that will be on this planet in the 2050. Hunger is not an agricultural problem it is a political one.

So now who wants to tell me about how all these wonderful chemicals are making the world a better place and how few ticks we have all over this country? Because what I see now is a tick population that is out of control.

What I see now is peanuts that we can't eat becasue they crop rotate with highly chemicaled cotton.

What I see now are chemical companies controlling seed banks and not allowing farmers to save seeds.

What I see now is the small farmer being crushed by chemical companies because they don't want to use their GMO seeds.

Rob

 

[Jeff244]

Rob-D
Platinum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Catskills
Posts: 717
	
Default Re: 7 dust going the way of stuff that works
I don't get it, people don't see the damage they are doing so they think it's not there.

The main ingredient in Seven is carbaryl, here's some of the damage it does:

"It causes birth defects in mammals, especially dogs.

It worsens the condition of people with hypertension and people on anti-depressant drugs.

It impairs the function of the pituitary gland, the thyroid gland, and the reproductive system.

It causes hyperactivity and learning disabilities in mammals.

It could increase the chance of heart attack in people with weak hearts.

The main break-down product, nitrosocarbaryl, which is easily created in the human gut, is a potent cancer-causing agent.

It causes irreversible chromosomal damage to human DNA (the genes in our cells)."

Carbaryl - Pesticide Black Death

Is this what you want your kids to ingest?

Now we have Roundup (glyphosate) so farmers can do "no till corn" which has to be genetically modified (GMO) to resist the pesticide. Trouble is that we don't know the long range effects of modifying our planet. If you ask Monsanto for absolute proof that GMO's won't go the way of their other products PCBs (carcinogenic) and the defoliate Agent Orange they have no answer. We're taking a bite of an apple that we can't replace. Is this the legacy we want to leave future generations?

Talk to a nurse in a hospital about cancer and ask her about the alarming rates that it has risen to. We now see young children getting cancer. The pesticdes on peanuts are so damaging that it can't be brought into schools. Is this what we want?

I used Tarro on ants and so did my firend. In both cases it was 100% effective, it just took time to work. But we don't have time anymore in this country. Too bad, what does that say about the value of our lives?

Rob
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If you read the entire article, the conclusion seems to be that it is not harmful to humans.

1.The highest human exposure measured during gypsy moth spraying is 740,000 times less than that encountered hourly during a 40-hour work week by carbaryl manufacturing plant workers. Some workers have been exposed to carbaryl for more than 10 years with no clinically significant adverse effects.

2.Human volunteers have orally ingested carbaryl at 2 mg/kg of body weight with no observed effects. Exposure during gypsy moth spray programs is about 20,000 times less than the human volunteers ingested.

3.The exposure during gypsy moth spray programs is 100 times lower than the acceptable daily intake (ADI) for humans established by the World Health Organization.

4.Exposure during gypsy moth spray programs is 5,000,000 times lower than the dose fed to rats during pregnancy and 200,000 times lower than the dose fed to pregnant monkeys. Even more important than these safety margins, birth defects did not occur in rhesus monkeys fed carbaryl throughout the gestation period. The monkey anatomy and physiology are, of course, quite similar to those of humans.

Jeff