can pyrethrum poison plants?

[skankmaster]

You can bet on it. I know from being in the market garden industry, that everything you eat in the fresh produce department is literally coated in countless pesticide sprays.

 

Wash every fruit and vege as best you can before eating it. I certainly do.

 

This is why i grow my own veges as well and eat Organic foods. I'd rather have a few bugs havin a munch on my veges than eat the pesticide coated crap in supermarkets that(as Mr Skywalker so rightly pointed out) will make your nads fall off in 20 years!! That goes for meat as well, the amount of hormones and antibiotics injected into Chickens, Sheep and Cows in unreal......Kangaroo meat is the way to go. Same can be said for eggs.

 

Garlic is a champion in the mite department, i have found only one problem though: The garlic tends to die off a few weeks after you turn to 12/12 and you have to make sure you keep the room/growspace really clean to stop the buggers getting in on your hands or gardening tools. Always a good idea to scrub everything you use outside before you use them inside or have tools you only use inside. This is more of a problem if you have Sativas or plants with a really long flowering cycle as you have to keep your eyes on em and give them a thorough checking every day to stop infestation before it starts. If the plants are really healthy you shouldnt have a big problem if you do get a few mites, but as i have heard a million times "prevention is better than cure".

[skankmaster]

Hey Luke, do you know much about pestoil? Is the runoff from the spraying ok on the soil(or whatever medium)? I know the runoff from the Pyrethrum i used caused problems before, even though i flushed them afterwards.

[Luke Skywalker]

No probs as far as I know, although I wouldn't be soaking the soil with the stuff, as it's an oil spray and may make the soil water repellant. Still, normal wash down should be fine, and the stuff breaks down readily.

 

There's also a new one out recently called Eco Oil, which is a vegetable oil and essential oil based product similar in action to white oil. This stuff is also approved for greenhouse vegetable production, so that should let you know how safe it is... (greenhouse growers are usually quite careful about what they use on their crops.) I may give this stuff a go when I run out of my white oil, but until then, I think it'll stay the first spray defence I'll use.

[Jesus.T.Parker]

I've used pyrethrum extensivley and with moderate success . It never was any good against spidermite of any kind . Some stuff called confidor was though . Pyrethrum was excelent against scarid fly . Used as a drench at one fifth standard dilution for 24 hrs apeared to have very little effect on my crop ( indoor flood and drain ) but wiped out the fly lave living in the rockwool starter blocks . This was a much better result than the scarid fly drench which, in my experience, can cause major crop threatining damage rather quickly whereas I once left the pyrethrum drench in the nutrient reserve for over a week with no problems . With spraying I to had burning problems which were cured by not spraying as heavily . It didn't really eradicate any bugs but controled limited types .