>>Also, has anyone tried kaolin on flea beetles? This finely powdered clay >>can be sprayed onto the foliage and it seems to foil a lwide variety of >>insects. It's non-toxic and can be incorporated into compost tea foliar >>sprays. Anyone try it? > >Hugh, in the form of kaolin spray that was perfected at the USDA >station in Kearneysville and 'premiered' at the Mid-Atlantic >Conference a few years back, it is said that it will stop flea beetle >damage to eggplant, which says a lot. The last time I talked to those >folks, annual crops were not an approved use for the commercial >product (Surround?), but I believe I saw ads in ACRES recently that >might indicate otherwise. (Besides, who among us still eats eggplant >leaves?) > >-Allan
Dear Allan, Thanks. I was there and I thought I heard this more or less out of the corner of my ear. On Mark Fulford's tomatoes the end of last August in Maine he was using kaolin in his compost tea and I saw no flea beetle damage on even the lowest leaves (which were still in great shape!). But I didn't know whether he might otherwise have had flea beetles. As we move further and further into an age of government regulation it should be clear that any new thing introduced into the growing system has to go through a lengthy approval process for each different kind of use. Doesn't matter how harmless it is. The Kearneysville researchers were using kaolin on fruit trees so they only went through this complicated process with fruit trees/bushes. I know of growers who use a tablespoon of sodium bicarbonate in their foliars to conteract the effects of acid rain. Works fine, is non-toxic, cheap, etc. I don't think it has ever been approved. Who would pay to walk it through the approval process? As a kid back when nearly all rural roads were gravel in South Louisiana I used to notice the blackberries near the road where the dust settled were always robust and immaculate, their foliage lasting in fine fettle until frost. But unless a heavy rain had just occurred you had to wash the berries--a small price to pay. Would clay dust vaporized by auto and truck traffic be an approved input? Of course not, but any damn fool kid could see where to pick the best berries. Of course, we didn't think much about how much lead might be in the berries by the roadside. That was definitely not an approved input either. But was it any better to pick on the canal banks where chemical toxins might (probably) have been greater? Remember, this was Louiaiana, the most polluted state in the nation. KInd of goes to show the inainity of these approval and certification processes. They tend to create a false sense of security along with paperwork and wheel spinning, both of which raise the CO2 levels. Oh well, Hugh Visit our website at: www.unionag.org
