How to Use Organic Pesticides

Dave Epstein: Hi! I am Dave Epstein. We are here in the New England Grows, we are on the trade show floor and you are walking around you pick up a great new organic product but if you really want to stay ahead of the competition, it's all those wonderful talks that New England Grows offers that you want to attend. Like Brad Roeller of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. What's the buzz that you are trying to get across the folks?

Brad Roeller: My goal here today is to have the larger audience that New England Grows always attracts and just get them to be aware of the alternatives their customer base is demanding more organically oriented ways of dealing with their landscapes and some of these have a long way to go, they are not a spinosads.

Dave Epstein: How can organics help keep this landscape professional competitive?

Brad Roeller: There are too many unanswered questions about pesticides used. These professional really have to educate their customer base on expectations and cost and every thing else that are associated with organics. We were starting to see that a few aphids and black vine weevils and whiteflies and all these are very easy to control with these minimum risk or reduced risk pesticides.

These Spinosads, the products like Conserve and Floramite are too that really are showing good promise in test, that only I have done but folks in land grant colleges had done. I have had no luck with any biopesticides or reduced risk pesticides in dealing with worms. When relying a biological, especially biofungicides it's best to employ a preventive strategy. You do not wait until the damage thresholds had been reached. I have been working with compost tea for three years, I learned a lot of lessons and spend a lot of money trying to get recipes for teas there is no one size fits all. If you managing turf, you want more of a bacterial dominated tea, whereas if you are managing woody plants or woody landscapes you might need a more fungal dominated.

I have seen that for a few years, landscapes employing compost tea programs, where composts in general will require a less water, have fewer cultural problems would be able to withstand environmental and biological stresses better than landscape maintained within organic fertilizers and chemical pesticides. However so far as disease in pest control which has a long way to go.

Dave Epstein: From the trade show floor to the seminars, its all here at New England Grows.


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