RE: Cold weather & pests
Hi Wim,
Those black "leaf lice" that attract ants are aphids. If you look
closely they are often a purlpe color. The ants "farm" them and collect the
honeydew "liquid aphid poop" mostly sugars that the ant feed on. Aphids are
a problem as they drain vital juices from the plants weakening them and are
known to carry viral diseases from one crop to another. They could infect
the pumpkins with the watermelon mosaic virus which has no treatment or
cure. I used micorrhizal innoculant last year on my plants. I didn't see
any significant difference, but I did grow my largest pumpkins yet, so
apparantly no harm done. Marigolds, and nasturtiums have been purported to
be useful and repelling unwanted insect pests. I have grown marigolds next
to my pumpkin hills the past two seasons, but haven't really noticed if they
really helped in that regard. It would take a significant number of
marigolds to really cover a pumpkin patch once the plants take off. Garlic
is said to repel aphids and I must admit I have never had an aphid problem
with my garlic. As for its effectiveness in repelling them from surrounding
plants I think they probably aren't much help. I have grown dahlias around
my patch for the past two seasons and have found them to be an effective
trap crop for spotted cucumber beetles. The beetles seem to prefer the
dahias smooth leaves, stems and flowers to the prickly pumpkin plants. Last
season I only found two cucumber beetles in male pumpkin flowers when I was
done pollinating. I found a lot more on the dahlias. Cucumber beetles can
also carry viral diseases and growing in an area where I cannot use chemical
pesticides I have found this to be an effective control.
Chris Michalec
Covington, WA
> I know that some people use other plants to keep insects
> away from their favourite crop. Why not fungi ??
>
> By the way, did any of you already use a plant to protect
> another one from 1 specific insect ?? If so, what was the result ??
> I once used onions to get snails away......Just throw them at the little
> bastards !!!....:-))
> No, when you plant onions around a plant, some kind of snails just don't
> come near anymore ! ! They don't like the smell.
>
> On fungicides, I never used them in gardening....., except to get
> some garden-woodwork last longer. Never to keep plants free
> from fungi. The things, which do the most harm to plants over
> here, are mildew and some kind of black 'leaf-lice' which always
> sits in colonies on the leaves. They also attract ants.
>
> Greetings.
>
> Wim Van Loock
> "Mr. Belgium" - I liked that........ :-))
> \\ -- //
> ( @ @ )
> ----oOOo--(_)--oOOo---------
>
> ----- Oorspronkelijk bericht -----
> Van: LIpumpkin@aol.com <L*@aol.com>
> Aan: pumpkins@mallorn.com <pumpkins@mallorn.com>
> Verzonden: dinsdag 9 januari 2001 0:56
> Onderwerp: Re: Cold weather & pests
>
> Nice article Mr.Belgium...thanks. It confirms what I thought about
> this when
> it was discussed last year on the list.....that the methods we use
> of
> overfertilization and watering (or at least to excess ! ) ,and the
> constant
> pampering pretty much eliminate the big benefit hoped for. Also,I
> sometimes
> wonder if our preventive and scheduled applications of
> Benlate,Benomil,Daconyl ( fungisides), etc would wipe out any high
> dollar
> fungi before any benefits were seen.......just my two cents worth.
> Again...thanks for the article..........G
>
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