Re: Cult: the borer and merit

Doreen,

I had a big-time borer problem last year, which I think was caused by my not
cutting back the foliage in the fall of 2001 (I didn't because all the rz
had been planted in August and I thought they were too new to cut back)
and/or my neighbor's grandson blowing all the dried leaves onto my garden,
thinking I wanted them there as winter mulch. I don't have a large iris bed,
thank goodness, because we were out there every day killing any borers we
could see, by poking them with pieces or wire or squashing them, and
destroying any leaves that looked the least bit suspicious.

I tried benefical nematodes. I had saved an old newspaper clipping about
using them on iris borers, and I had checked out the GardensAlive! web site,
(gardensalive.com) as the article instructed. I had a hard time finding a
garden center that carried them and also a hard time finding an employee at
a garden center who knew what I was talking about! Of course, GardensAlive!
does sell them so I could have bought them online. Nematodes crawl all over
the leaves and into the soil and eat the grubs that grow up to be borers.

I applied them at the end of April (which, I was told, was early, but I was
seeing borers!!!) and I have not had any borers this year, even though the
neighbor's grandson once again blew all the dried leaves onto my garden
because again he thought I wanted them there as protection. I was going to
put them down again this year, but my dad talked me out of it. I sure hope
I'm not sorry next spring...

With the weather being so cool, it is probably not too late to use nematodes
in MA.

Cheryl Leigh just outside Philly where- surprise!- it's gonna rain again
tomorrow!

Zone SOGGY- uh- 6.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Gardenhous@aol.com>
To: <iris@hort.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 17 June 2003 9:47 PM
Subject: Re: [iris] Cult: the borer and merit


> Hi
> Yes i spread it on a warm day in the beginning of April but then it got
cold
> and we had snow till the end of April. really. So maybe it was temperature
> sesitive????
> Where are the chemists?
> In that i feel like my garden is about to qualify as a toxic waste site,
Grub
> control, round up , weed killer, diazinon, Preen...and now i threw out
some
> sevin and stuff to killthe red lily beetle......i think be borer needs to
be
> adressed more throughly. Because i still can't control it at all.   The
life
> cycle as reported in Bill Shears book is inaccurate. The pupae definately
winter
> over. So this suggests to me that we have three stages on going at any one
> time.
> Again i think trimming fans is a big part of saving  my iris. Truly you
would
> cry to see the devastation.
> Doreen F. McCabe
> The Garden House
> 176 Carlisle Rd
> Westford, Massachusetts 01886

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