Morning of day two after spraying low-cost insecticide, the plant that had shown several borg per leaf still shows none alive, zero movement! I can't stress enough how hard it's been to contain and now hopefully eradicate these pests, but the high-priced stuff wasn't working, the pepper sprays proved ineffective and I was seeing best results from blasting cold water all over the plants for several minutes at a time...a trick that does seem to slow the beasts.
What seems to be around here is that these are some seriously resistant bugs, likely a product of the sprays used in the fields to eradicate them....this has been an exceptionally bad year for them (as farmers have suggested to me). Some soybean fields are dead from them (not just drought damage, but the leaves are destroyed much as I've seen in my plants), some farmers who've given up on their crops didn't spray follow-ups to kill them...it's been a storm of borg!
The greenhouse looks better than the downstairs, at least the gals stayed somewhat healthy in there despite the constant invasion...I guess taking them out into the open air helped a lot (speculation)...and daily saturations! The early swapping of gals into the basement likely made for a nasty invasion that had left me reeling. The daily bringing in of borg from the greenhouse (hitchhikers on clothing) also likely helped the beasts gain a strong foothold even being treated with the costlier spray (floromite) and yes, the cheap pepper sprays (which I speculate did slow them enough to give me a false sense of safety, them time to get a very strong foothold). And no, I didn't just indiscriminately start treating with several sprays, I heeded all advice given here and did a regimental attack with floromite sprayed twice (week apart)...and follow-up sprays of pepper juice after seeing depressing results from the insecticide.
I misspoke in my last post, the feed mill salesman swayed me away from ordering the $250/bottle FORBID (not floromite) in favor of trying the cheap spray...he highly recommended it for my gals above the costly spray. For now, I think he was right!!! As I am not one to spam but am happy to help, I'll mention the spray after certain she's worked...
Beauty of this low-cost spray, it'll kill any insect, can be used indoors for household pests (spiders, fleas etc etc) and, if works as I suspect at this time) can be used to treat my basement regularly to keep problems at bay....and I'm not freaking out at the cost.
