Organic pest and disease control

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Zasso Nouka
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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Zasso Nouka »

This little chap might look like he is wearing a nice warm fluffy coat to keep him warm as temperatures drop but it's far far grimmer than that. This is caterpillar was sprayed with Botanigard around 5 days ago and has been infected with Beauveria bassiana
caterpillar.jpg
caterpillar.jpg (13.57 KiB) Viewed 1151 times
Here's another couple
caterpillar2.jpg
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We're finding these dotted all over the place now.

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by paradoxbox »

I'm not sure if these two methods will be considered organic or not but for what it's worth:

Gokiburi, ari, and probably mukade control:
Make a paste out of 1 part borax powder, 1 part sugar, and 1 part water.
Spread the paste directly onto a cardboard strip and place the strips strategically around where you're having the insect invasions.

Be careful with this stuff - it IS poisonous to children and pets so don't get too crazy with it and leave it lying around where the neighbor's cat is going to lick it. But putting this up in the rafters of your house for example will put an end to any gokiburi activity up there.


Second method.. also probably not organic, but it works
Buy some cigarettes from the konbini, something like Wakaba with very high nicotine content is best (Don't look at TAR content, nicotine is what you're after). If you're a smoker, smoke the cigarettes and keep all the ashes. If you're not a smoker, just poke the tobacco out of the cigarettes and put the tobacco into a 500ml spray bottle full of warm water. Same thing if you're using cigarette ashes. Let this soak for a good long while, I let it sit for several days at a warm temperature. Then carefully filter the liquid through a coffee filter - the liquid is what you want to keep. Use a funnel that you'll never use for cooking again to do this.

Now you have nicotine pesticide, this stuff is REALLY powerful. Try not to get it on yourself, it will make you mildly high. Nicotine is a natural insecticide to many insects and is one of the reasons I grow tobacco plants (Though some insects can resist it, certain strains of tobacco have such high nicotine levels that they're nearly untouchable by insects, and simply touching the leaves with your bare hands will make you high after a few moments.)

Whether nicotine is organic to you is your choice. It washes off with rain and it has a short half life, but it does work against insects and it is a naturally occurring chemical so.. Meh! I use this spray to blast away the mildly toxic jorougumo that are everywhere around our house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_clavata

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by paradoxbox »

Curious, do these nematodes go after tomato plant roots, tobacco plant roots or potatoes/carrots? I have often heard of evil nematodes destroying someone's prized tomato plants. Different kind of nematode or are they just selective about the things that they eat?
Zasso Nouka wrote:One of the most insidious pests we've had to deal with is the nekirimushi (ネキリムシ) or cutworm, these caterpillars live just under the soil only emerging at night like some twisted vegetable destroying ninja. Typically you'll find your young veggies bitten off at soil level with the above ground part laying decapitated on the ground. This is what they look like with some typical damage.
ネキリムシ.jpg
The normal advice for dealing with these little blighters is to place small collars on all your young plants until they are too large to be bothered by nekirimushi and then remove the collars. That might work on a very small scale but it's never going to work on a field of carrots or other large plantings. Or you can gently dig around a decapitated plant with your fingers looking for the culprit.

The answer ? Entomopathogenic nematodes, you spray these onto the soil you want to protect and they seek out soil dwelling pests like nekirimushi, beetle larva and others and kill them. The soil needs to be warm and wet so best times to apply the nematodes is during the rainy season in the early evening with rain forecast the next day. Once in the soil they will remain there for the rest of the growing season and there is some evidence they might persist even longer.

As these are a naturally occurring nematode already living in the soil there is absolutely no danger in using them, all you are doing is raising the numbers already in the soil.

Steinernema glaseri can be purchased in small amounts from

SDS Biotech

Or larger amounts can be ordered from your local taneyasan or

Nihon Nougyou Systems

and other online retailers.

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Great information Paradoxbox,

Tobacco is naturally occurring so has to be considered organic I'd say, whether borax is strictly speaking organic or not is probably open to interpretation as Bordeaux mixture is generally considered ok to use in organic farming but the constituents themselves aren't organic and pyrethrum from pyrethrum daisies is organic but highly toxic to many things. Maybe hard core organic fundamentalists might not approve but I've never been one to be too strict myself ;)

As for the nematodes these one will only attack insect larvae living in the soil and won't harm your plants, the ones that harm plants are a different species.

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Zasso Nouka »

Just wanted to say that we no longer import neem from India as although we found it to be effective on caterpillars it didn't work for us on flea beetles (キスジノミハムシ), cutworms (ネキリムシ) and grasshoppers. Also we found it almost impossible to spray it regularly during the rainy season without it being washed off the plants by the rain before it could work so have discontinued using it.

Bacillus Thuringiensis is now our main choice for caterpillars due to it only affecting the target species and we use netting on low laying crops wherever possible and then use diatomaceous earth and Botaniguard for situations where a net is not practical along with predatory nematodes to control soil pest.

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by donguri »

MUKADE.

I have encountered one nearly every night for the past week and just now, this morning, in the kitchen sink. Creepy, crawly and full of amazing life force, these guys really creep me out. Any suggestions? We don't have any pets and our house is also our place of business- we live on the second floor and run a diner/izakaya on the ground floor. So far these buggers have only appeared during non-business hours, and only on the ground floor but even that is too much. The first floor is concrete doma and zashiki. Paradoxbox talked about making a nicotine spray, I wonder if that would work on mukade? Any experience/advice appreciated!

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Zasso Nouka »

I'm not sure if there is a permanent solution for these guys, although they do have a bright side in that they eat cockroaches. You can Barusan your place and that will kill any inside but won't stop more from entering. It's also a real pain in the arse cleaning up after using them so we didn't bother last year. Now we use those freezing sprays to get them when the come into our house as we weren't too happy spraying the pesticide ones around and then breathing whatever toxin they use.

Hopefully someone else will have some better advice

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Paletti »

Great info in this thread. I also wonder to what extent birds could be used to combat all those crawling critters but I suppose the sheer number of cats around will make them think twice before landing between the rows of veges.

Have you had any trouble with aphids/aburamushi? I believe I read in Elliot Coleman's Winter Harvest Handbook, that aphids can be found in winter due to nitrogen excess in the soil - he recommends flushing the soil to prevent them getting a foothold.

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by Shizuman »

I just had to head up on Tuesday to deal with them on my cucumbers. Im trying to keep the ants down to give the ladybugs a good shot at the little buggers

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Re: Organic pest and disease control

Post by gonbechan »

About mukade.
When we lived in the mountains, they were also frequent visitors. We kept several long BBQ tongs around the house and big mason jars full of alcohol.
When we found one, we would pick it up with the tongs and pop it into the mason jar.
According to locals the resulting alcohol/mukade blend is excellent for putting on mukade bites and reduces suffering time considerably.

I am not sure this is truly the case and think that just pure alcohol would work just as well as often the venom will be present on the skin around the bite and filling the puncture wound and is difficult to wash away even with hot water. The alcohol works for this.

Before the -50C sprays were available, boiling water was a good way to kill a mukade. They are really hard to kill and you can cut one in half with a spade and the pointy end will still try to get to you and do you in.

Best way to keep them out is to plug all drains when not in use and try to find and fill any cracks and crannies in your house. For floor drains without a plug, You can also sprinkle food grade diatomaceous earth in the cracks near common siting areas and under your floor.

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