Arnold Ebert interview with Bob Every about garden pests

Hello folks, this is Arnold Ebert of the Oregon State College Extension Service. I'd like to visit with you today by transcription about controlling those insect pests that we find in our gardens. It is garden time again in Oregon from one end of the state to the other in the cities and on the farms Young people and old are all growing gardens. Some folks grow gardens just for the fun of getting outdoors sort of a hobby that pays off and find garden vegetables. Other folks grow gardens just to keep down that old high cost of living. And others look to those gardens as a source of fine high quality food that you can't get anywhere else except from your own garden. But whatever the reason we all grow gardens. Now it's mighty discouraging to spend a lot of time and effort and money growing a garden only to find the bugs of one kind or another helping themselves to our vegetables. They're just ruined in the crop.

Now these insects spread disease among the plants and they chew off the roots and some even eat up the vegetables we'd plant on eating ourselves. Bob, every year of the Anomology, our Anomology specialist with the Oregon Extension Service tells us that we don't have to put up with these unwelcome visitors in our gardens. In fact, Bob's with us today to just tell us a little bit about some of the things that we can do about these bugs. How about that Bob? Well, that's right Arnold. To get good control of insects requires a certain amount of planning. That planning should begin in good many cases right at planting time. For example, a cabbage maggot. You should just as soon as you put out the plants, be preparing to control those cabbage maggots that may attack that plant a little later on. Carrot rust flies another example. We have a measure of control that can be obtained by putting a little DDT in the furrow as the seed is planted. So whatever the insect does require a little timing. At the beginning, right at the timing time, later in the season requires proper timing.

And in all, it might be summed up by saying it requires a little knowledge about the insects that you're going to control. Well, now Bob, I suppose an Oregon from one end of Oregon to the other, we have pretty nearly most kinds of these garden insects, don't we? That's right Arnold. Some of them occur, for example, carrot rust flies, particular problem here in the Willamette Valley down as far as you gene. It occurs over in the Coast Counties down as far as Wallport, but I don't believe that it occurs over in eastern Oregon. At least we've never had any reports or never seen it over there. The potato flea beetle is another example. It's a very serious past year throughout the Willamette Valley in the Coast Counties and a serious over in central Oregon. But it's not a pest in other parts of Oregon except those that I mentioned. Well, now that means that in some places in our state we're going to have to know one kind of a bud and in other places we're going to have to know another one.

Where are we going to find out about those things? After all, the average gardener is just born in Arizona. I don't know one of these bud to be solved. I expect Arnold that experience is probably the best teacher for some of these things, but we have to mean by helping the person to gain their experience back. It's available to anyone who wishes it through their county extension office, and it does give the pests the locations in which they're going to be found and the control measures for it. In other words Bob, you mean that if I have a particular bug that seems to be damaging one of my plants in a garden or one of the kinds of plants I might have in a garden, this bulletin would help me identify it and tell me what to do about it? It would Arnold, it's not going to give you any positive identification perhaps, but through association with the plant and the injury and the appearance of the bug, you can probably identify it pretty well, especially if it's one of our common garden pests.

That bulletin then looks to me like one that every gardener ought to have on the shelf somewhere Bob. Well, I kind of think he ought to have it in his hip pocket most of the time when he's out in the garden. Now that bulletin again, we'll refer to it a little later on, but it's a vegetable garden insect pest control. It has a number extension bulletin 676, and Bob said every county agent's office in the state of Oregon has them, so you can just go to your county agent's office and get one. But now Bob, you mentioned a while ago, DDT. Now that's a new insecticide to some folks, it's a thing that kills some bugs. And there are others, we can't read a paper or a farm magazine or a garden magazine without running into all kinds of funny names of new chemicals that kill insects. What about those? Well Arnold, for the most part, these new chemicals are fine. The use of the new chemicals has certainly improved our agriculture, made it possible to raise crops before while we've suffered serious loss from insects.

But for the most part, good many of these new insecticides are not suitable for use by the average home gardener. For one thing, some of them are extremely toxic. You mean they're poisonous? That's it, they're poisonous. They're dangerous to handle. Parathion, for example, even the folks that make that warning, the average individual from using it, it's for use by only the experienced individual, what a person, oh, like an orchardist, who's accustomed to handling insecticides. So we're not recommending Parathion for use by the average home gardener. There's another one of the, another new material that you hear about, methoxychlor, perhaps, now that is going to find a place I believe in use for the home gardener. It's less toxic to warm blood animals and DDT will control. A lot of those garden pests doesn't leave an undesirable residue on the foliage of the plant.

That is the residue that's left there is not likely to cause any difficulty. I think amongst the old standard recommendations that we've had for years, the nicotine sulfate is certainly still being recommended, certainly still as good as it ever was for those soft-bodied insects like apes, so on. We're recommending this year for the first time a material called chloridane to control cabbage maggots. Now, is this, is this chloridane a safe one to use? It's as safe as DDT, Arnold. Any of the insecticides, I think it should be emphasized that any insecticide is a poison and should be considered as such. But chloridane and DDT and methoxychlor are not in the same category as some of the others, such as Parathion. Now then, Bob, does this mean that some of these new ones like methoxychlor and some of the others are going to mean that our old standbys like maybe some folks use an arsenic, a lead arsenator, something like that.

Those are all going to be rotinone. There's another one. Are those going to be all out the window? No good to use in a garden? Oh, no, no. Rotinone is still a good garden insecticide. I think many folks use that almost exclusively, and it's certainly a fine insecticide. Lead arsenate is finding less favor, I think, because some of the other materials will give better control in an arsenate, and after all, arsenic is a pretty poisonous material too. So methoxychlor, I think, could be used in place of lead arsenate to good advantage in many cases. What about the equipment that we use to put this stuff on the vegetables, Bob? Well, generally speaking, Arnold, I think a dust is probably the most convenient form to apply insecticides. Dust can, with hand equipment, they can be applied a little more thoroughly than is the case with the hand type of sprayers.

Some folks have good garden sprayers, and of course they could be used perfectly satisfactory. But I think for the average home gardener, the dust are generally more satisfactory to use. Well, now too, we have, in addition to dust, we have baits and things like that, we put out two that we just need them in our garden insect pest control program, don't we? That's right, we have to have bait to control such pests as oslugs, garden slugs, cut worms, strawberry root weevil, in some cases, grasshoppers. I think, Arnold, we could summarize the thing rather well as far as the insecticides we concerned by saying that you should have a little bait for cut worms, slugs, have some nicotine sulfate for the aphus, little DDT, methoxychlor, are wrote known for your flea beetles, and cabbage worms, and for that cabbage maggot, of course that cloudy.

Will you tell me right now above the difference between the cabbage worm and the cabbage maggot? Well, the cabbage maggot, the adult of that, is a fly, and it attacks the cabbage plants very soon after they're set off. The eggs are laid on the ground, the eggs hatch, and the young maggot goes down and starts working into the roots. And if you get very many of those in the roots of a cabbage plant, it kills it. The cabbage worm comes on later in the year after the cabbage has started to head out, usually, in attacks the leaves. And these the follow that we see out there, eating up the leaves and usually finding way down in the head of the cabbage somewhere. That's right. So the cabbage maggot is one of those that you don't see until the damage is done and then it's too late. So it has to take a little planting in the case of that pest. Isn't that the one that sometimes we cut tar paper discs and fit them around the stalk of our cabbage plant when we put them out in the spring bomb? That's right. That has been an old practice for a good many years. Some folks still use it.

But in tests that have been run, why the newer method this chloridane has been superior? How do you apply this chloridane? We'll just take a teaspoon full of the dust, 5% dust. It can be obtained at the insecticide dealer. And just sprinkle that dust about a teaspoon full of it right around each plant if you set it out. Right on top of the ground, yeah. And that will take care of the fly that will lay that egg. It keeps them away anyway, doesn't it? Well, it does have some repellent action and probably kills the young larvae too. Well, now what about some of the other more important garden insect pests that we're going to find pretty generally in all our gardens in the state of Oregon Bob? Aren't looking over our correspondence that we have with the average home gardener. Of course, you know we get good deal of mail and questions. We find that wireworms are one of the number one pests. And in that bulletin, you'll see that we are now recommending DDT for use in the control of wireworms. DDT applied at the rate of 10 pounds to the acre of actual DDT, now that would be 100 pounds of 10% dust, has given very good control of wireworms.

It doesn't give immediate control, but it does give control for a number of years. So if the average gardener is troubled with wireworms and his garden, if he'll sprinkle liberally around the garden surface, the 10% DDT dust and then diss that in or spade it in, he's going to go along ways towards getting control of that pesky wireworm. And that's particularly helpful to the folks out in eastern Oregon where wireworm has always been a bad problem. Yes, it is. That's eastern Oregon and then over here in the valley, too. Well, Bob, you want to just touch on another one or two here that we might find. Of course, this bulletin, we mentioned a while ago, extension bulletin 676 that your county agent has right in his office just free for nothing to go ask for. That has the wireworm control cabbage maggots in the post of others.

There's too many, perhaps, to mention right now, but it does cover the whole field very well. It'll help you folks in identifying that insect that is in your garden, what to do about it and how to do it. And I think you'll be very pleased with that bulletin every gardener ought to have one in your county agent be glad to give it to you. Well, thanks, Bob. We've been visiting today with Bob every, our extension entomologist. This broadcast has been a transcribed feature of the Oregon State College Extension Service.