Trying to find out if anyone has experience using beneficial nematodes. My 16 month old is spending more and more time in the yard and the wife always seems to be tinkering out in the garden or beds. I have an acre on James Island and it should cost less than $100 to treat next spring. Anyone find any negative effects? The wife is a gardener, so I wouldn’t want to do anything that will cause ill effects there.
Anyone happen to know if they work on cabbage worms? If I can take care of the cabbage worms I will gain somewhat hero status with the boss.
Dang, I learn something new every day here. All I knew about nematodes were they killed my tomatoes. And I might have been wrong about that. We usually use liquid Sevin for pest control on vegetables. Works pretty good. I’ll have to check into those. The older I get, the more I know I don’t know.
You know, I never thought about these things and all the work they caused me once!
Went on a Military Deployment to Germany once in the 80’s. When we got ready to return equipment to the US, we had to steam clean it. We were told that they had the Golden Nematode there that if introduced to the US would wipe out the potato crop! So I do share your concern about bad ones! https://www.aphis.usda.gov/publications/plant_health/content/printable_version/fs_golden_nematode_08.pdf
Symptoms typical of potato “soil sickness” had been noted in a field near Hicksville, Long Island in the early 1930s, but it was not until 1941 that the cause was identified as Hederodera rostochiensis (now Globodera rostochiensis). The farm on which it was found had been a staging area for military equipment returning from World War I, and the nematode likely was introduced in mud on the tires of returning vehicles. The population growth of G. rostochiensis is very slow, and it can take 10-12 years to build up to a level that can cause noticeable damage. In the time between its introduction and its identification as the golden nematode, it was spread to other potato farms on Long island through the reuse of burlap bags, the return to the fields of “tare soil” (soil that falls off the tubers during grading and packing), and the movement of farm machinery and vehicles from one field to another
Narcosis, I’ve been around a few strictly organic gardens and they were in a controlled green house.
There are so many varieties of good and bad nematodes you would have to start with a sterile environment and be super selective with what you introduced to do any good. imo. Your best bet on cabbage worms (they also love broccoli and cauliflower) is watch for the little white moths and be supper vigilant on spraying for them. I use powered seven dust.
Cracker they will kill your tomatoes!.. just a different variety. Remember the space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003? They took up some nematodes for an experiment and some survived the crash. Tough rascles.
Cracker, can you still find 10% seven dust? All I can find is the 5%.
You’re wasting your money. Not that they won’t or can’t work in some instances, but it’s not common. What they don’t tell you is there are so many parasitic nematodes this live naturally in your soil (which will differ by a myriad of different factors, ie, type soil, ph, sodium level, bicarbonate level and on and on), that when a non native specific type nematode is introduced, they either die immediately from exposure, or the native nematodes have them for brunch.
Nematodes are so Bad-A, if over time they are treated with the same nematocide, they will develop a tolerance to it and begin eating it. And nematocides are the most toxic of all “insecticides”.
Thank you 23! I enjoy you and that Pod feller to! Pod we had a Mechanized Battalion, to steam clean in the middle of winter. We spent 36 straight hours cleaning that stuff. That was a bunch of tracked vehicles to clean!
One of my best friends and his wife came in to visit for a few nights this weekend. He has a couple of PHDs and is director of Aquaculture at the University of Florida, and chairman of the board of directors at the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. Very smart guy, a lot smarter than I am, maybe one of the top in the world when it comes to fish farming, although you’d never know it to meet him. He also knows what the bottom of a rum bottle looks like
Anyway, we both smoke and his wife smokes and we had a full ashtray on the back deck. It rained all night and the ashtray was real funky with soggy tobacco water. We both get up early and I met him on the deck at 0600. He was pouring all the funky tobacco juice into my wife’s house plants, said it would kill the nematodes that needed killing. I told him to carry on, it was too early in the morning to argue with a scientist about nematodes. I reckon he probably knew more about it than I did. Plants are still alive and healthy.
Living will kill us all. No matter what I do, I ain’t getting out of here alive anyway. I never expected to ever see 21, all the years past that I consider free.
Save your crab shells and your shrimp shells! Both are very high in chitin, and that is what the exoskeleton of nematodes are made of. By introducing ground up shells to your soil you increase the beneficial bacteria that feed on chitin thus eliminating the nematodes.
Larry nicotine is a pesticide, and has been used for hundreds of years to control bugs in the ground. Unfortunately smokers kill many more tomato plants by touching them because tobacco Carries the mosaic virus and that will wipe out tomatoes and potatoes.
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PROUD YANKEE
Oyster Baron
NMFS = No More Fishing Season
“Back home we got a taxidermy man. He gonna have a heart attack when he see what I brung him”
Living will kill us all. No matter what I do, I ain’t getting out of here alive anyway. I never expected to ever see 21, all the years past that I consider free.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Swamp Worshiper
Statistics show that 98% of us will die at some point in our lives…
Living will kill us all. No matter what I do, I ain’t getting out of here alive anyway. I never expected to ever see 21, all the years past that I consider free.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Swamp Worshiper
I hear ya,I would rather carry a cane in my golden years,not an oxygen tank.
Save your crab shells and your shrimp shells! Both are very high in chitin, and that is what the exoskeleton of nematodes are made of. By introducing ground up shells to your soil you increase the beneficial bacteria that feed on chitin thus eliminating the nematodes.
Larry nicotine is a pesticide, and has been used for hundreds of years to control bugs in the ground. Unfortunately smokers kill many more tomato plants by touching them because tobacco Carries the mosaic virus and that will wipe out tomatoes and potatoes.
I can’t remember all the details, but I remember reading many years ago to not smoke, dip, or chew in the garden.
If you’re lucky enough to be fishing, you’re lucky enough.
