sooby said:For pest control I use a commercial insecticidal soap, like Safers, that is made specifically for plants. It is organic (OMRI listed) whereas "big brand" kitchen dish soap would not technically be considered organic if that's important to anyone (and is not really soap but detergent).
Sue,
There's a concoction that I keep around in a hand pump sprayer for use against various insects. It started with Neem Oil, and since the mixing directions called for a surfactant, I used Safer's Insecticidal Soap—mixing both products per label directions, resulting in what is theoretically an organic, insecticidal, "double-whammy". In a narrow stream, it's amazing for knocking Yellow Jackets and Narcissus Bulb flies to the ground in mid-flight, and is very effective for spider mites and aphids as well.
I'm starting a small-scale soap experiment. There are three pots of evergreen daylilies that I have been bringing inside the house every night this winter. One pot has 3 large seedlings; To The Limit x (J.T. Davis x Ed Brown), another has 4 small seedlings; The Blessings of Freedom x Red Blooded, and the third contains three small fans of The Blessings of Freedom. After a long period of drizzly and rainy weather, I started to see a few pustules on them. I'm not seeing much if any new rust in the garden due to the cool weather, but the 60°-64° nights inside, coupled with the wet conditions outside, are letting rust develop on these "inside" plants. The warm, dry nights also resulted in an amazing outbreak of spider mites. I'm now in my second week of applying the Neem/Safer's solution to them, and hopefully I'll be able to determine if the spray is effective for controlling rust. Interestingly, the "inside" plants aren't showing significant growth advances over many other evergreen seedlings that are spending the winter outside. (They're simply warmer at night, they're not being given supplemental light.) Of course, it's not much of a winter yet - frosts have been light and infrequent.
There must be a high level of translocation going on with the systemic fungicides, as it would seem to be practically impossible to thoroughly wet the lower leaf surfaces of daylilies.
In his 2016 catalog descriptions, Jamie Gossard reports some significant plant growth and performance enhancements resulting from the use of fungicides in the strobilurin family, due to an increase in photosynthesis. (Cabrio, Headline...)
http://heavenlygardens.com/ima...
This was the first I've heard about this growth-enhancing effect. I've found a few research papers which compared wheat production between treated and untreated fields, but the increases in production seemed to be simply the result of healthier plants. I wonder how many people will be tempted to use these fungicides as photosynthesis enhancers. In order to verify those effects, a controlled study would need to be done using rust-free plants, or plants treated with another family of fungicides as a control group.
A couple of other thoughts regarding the soaps. If they prove to be effective, it would be nice to know by what means they work. I would guess that by thoroughly wetting the spores, their ability to be blown around is diminished, which might go a long way toward reducing the spread of rust. Or, it might be that by wetting the spores, they are encouraged to "sprout" right there at the original infection site, much like pollen can be prematurely sprouted with moisture and rendered ineffective.
