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Garden
Garden Q&A
Answers to some of your gardening questions.
By JOHN A. STARNES JR.
Published June 10, 2006
Weaning roses from the pesticide diet Over the years I have tried to grow roses and have always used fungicides and insecticides on them. Is it possible to retrain the roses to live without these pesticides? This year for the first time there were thrips on the buds. I used a malathion spray on them every other day until they were thrip-free. What would you recommend for this kind of invasion? In my garden and my clients' rose gardens I withhold all chemical pesticides, but add beneficial fungi, bacteria and predatory insects. This creates a natural balance that prevents most bug and disease problems. I haven't sprayed since 1998, when I bought this south Tampa lot; I now have more than 200 rose bushes, and thrips are a very rare occurrence. Yet the sprayed gardens I visit fight thrips and other plagues throughout the year. Sprinkling your gardens with any dry compostmaker or Calf Manna from a feed store will allow you to add beneficial critters. I have developed my own brew, "John's Jungle Juice," which introduces beneficial fungi and microbes. For information, e-mail me at the address at the end of this column. Once you stop spraying, various native ladybugs, lacewings and tiny nonstinging trichogramma wasps will colonize your roses as allies, eating the bad bugs for you. Spray away the whiteflies Whiteflies are infesting my gardenias. How can I get rid of them? Safest and quickest is to blast them off with a daily coarse spray of water from a garden hose nozzle. Or make a safe insecticide by rubbing a bar of "Kirk's Castile" soap against a cheese grater and dissolving 1 to 3 tablespoons of the shavings in a gallon of hot water. Let it sit overnight, then pour into a trigger spray bottle and spray the gardenia weekly. Be sure to spray the leaf undersides, where larvae and eggs may hide. John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for Florida. He can be reached at johnastarnes@msn.com.
[Last modified June 9, 2006, 11:18:05]
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