Re: Merit active ingredient

>Laurie in her post gave the name of the Bayer product present in Merit.  I
>can't quote it exactly, but it is on the order of "imidipropan" or something
>close to that.. 

Close, Neil.  It's imidacloprid, the same active ingredient found in 
Advantage pet flea control products

The granular product is named something like "Bayer Advanced Lawn White 
Grub Control" and should contain only imidacloprid as the active 
ingredient.  I believe there may be formulas with Merit mixed with 
fertilizers, but I would recommend using a product containing Merit alone.

>It is long lasting.

The Bayer rep with whom I spoke a couple years ago said one application 
would last all season.
>
>In the future I plan to use the Bayer product and also
>could use some application rate information which, as I recall, is in Laurie
>F's post.

The Bayer rep was *very* reluctant to speak to me about Merit at all, 
since it is not labeled for use with irises.  After I assured him I would 
NOT sue either him or Bayer for any damage to my irises potentially 
caused by Merit, he finally did "guesstimate" an application rate of 1 
tsp/clump.  That's what I used last year to wonderful effect.

This year, however, I *may* be seeing some Merit damage that I did NOT 
see last year.  I dug and divided just about all my irises last summer, 
so the mature clumps I treated with Merit last spring are now mostly 
individual rzs this spring.  Four-six weeks ago, I sprinkled 1 tsp of 
Merit around each of last summer's transplanted divisions, but I'm afraid 
that may have been too much - esp for the MDBs and SDBs.  Some of the 
divisions have now dried up and disappeared.  It may not have had 
anything at all to do with the Merit, though.  Until this last week, our 
spring has been absolutely bone dry.  It's certainly possible the drought 
conditions killed off some of the littleuns that didn't have a chance to 
develop much of a root system after division last summer.  I haven't seen 
the same sort of problems occurring with the larger medians and TBs, all 
of which were also divided and replanted as single rzs last summer and 
treated with 1 tsp. each of Merit this spring.

Sometimes it's just not easy to figure out what's causing what in a 
garden.

Laurie


-----------------
laurief@paulbunyan.net
http://www.geocities.com/lfandjg/
http://www.angelfire.com/mn3/shadowood/irisintro.html
USDA zone 3b, AHS zone 4 - northern MN
normal annual precipitation 26-27"
slightly acid clay soil

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE IRIS
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index