Ben,
I tried safer soap last winter but lost a good deal of my seedlings to bugs.. before making my own mix..
I have made my own concoction and it seems to work better but still not 100%..
Most of my bug problem is spider mites..
When I was a teen I read helpful hints by heloise ( I think that was where I read it)
any way.. my mom had terrible troubles with her rose bushes and the bugs on them.. I made up this mix and the bug problem was gone..
I remebered this so I tried with my plants and it helped..
as most of my trees are no bearing I do not have to worry about the mix and would it harm fruit..
I have noticed I can not use it on certain plants like my avocado..
any way.. if you are interested.. the mix is.. 2 tbs rubbing alcohol, 2 tbs dish detergent, about 5 oz of tobacco water and about 24 oz of water in spray bottle..
I put plants in bath tub to water them.. then spray foliage.. then spray with above formula.. then by the time the pots are drained and ready to be moved the foliage is mostly dry..
This kinda stinks.. but not too badly..
I would not use this on plants that are fuzzy leaf, etable leaves or fruiting with the tobacco water in it..

I do check regularly for bugs I can squish.. so far so good with scale.. I've only seen a few..

It can be a pain to lug a bunch of plants to the shower to hose them off in winter.. but once a month seems to help..
and in the shower I can use water that is not icy cold..

I'm hoping this winter will be a bit better than last.. though I do not have near as many seedlings this yr as I did last..
But the bug population in general has been terrable since the flood.. so.. we shall see..
maybe with using my mix from the start will help..

I was going to try that Bayer tree and shrub stuff.. but since it does nothing for spider mites.. I'll try my mix from the start..
aaahhhhh to have a simple fix for bug problems..

Looking around I guess I have more rooted cuttings that are still young more so than seedlings.. hmm..
well Here is hoping it works!!

Gina *BabyBlue*

Thanks Gina for your secret. Maybe I'll try it again.
It is the Spider mites that killed all of my plants specially my papayas.
I have now a one thriving small papaya tree that Millet recommended to plant, the dwarf kind and I am sure your recipe will help and I kept it in a special file for future use.
BTW where and how you make the tobacco juice?
Where cn you buy it?
Benny

Benny,

I think I may have a better thing for you to try. Instead of tobacco leaves, use guava leaves. I know you have guava. I plan to harvest the leaves just before the first frost. Put them in blender, together with the alcohol, blend away and then strain and squeeze through cheese cloth. I will then use that.

A while back, there were articles circulating about how guava leaves can be effective disinfectant as well as insect repellant or killer. The asian psyllids responsible for greening diseases seem to avoid guavas that by intercropping guavas and citruses, the greening disease won't spread far.

As a mite killer, it may or may not work, the best way to find out is to try. So same recipe as that of Gina, only use the juice extracted from guava leaves. I know for sure that your citruses would be protected.

I'll try that against scales and white flies.

Joe

Joe:
Oh, yes I have a guava tree.
I also have white flies infestation in my tomatoes. But I keep them at bay with my 16 gallon Sears vacuum cleaner. This vacuum really sucks them up when they go near the hose. Probably don't know what happen to them when they come near. It is just like getting trap in a black hole.
I just wonder sometimes what's inside the vacuum cleaner. Do they thrive there?
Also I used guava leaves as a disinfectant when I was a boy 7 years old in the province as told by the elders. And all the boys used that as well for generations. And sulfathysol.

I don''t want to open it.
Thanks for the help.
And I have all the ingredients now.
Thanks a lot guys.
I know my trees are in good hands.

Benny

I thought I had posted a reply but I guess I didn't.. Hate that I lost all that I wrote But I guess it was rather long any way.. LOL

I would also like to add.. I put Fish Emulsions as a foliar spray so that helped them look a bit nicer.. though a lot stinker.. LOL

I do plan on getting Lime Sulphur as per suggested by Bonnie in another thread.. but will probably have to travel to Wichita to pick it up..

The tobacco water is nothing more than tobacco that has soaked in very hot water.. I have had ppl collect cigarette butts in a metal coffee can for me.. Other wise it would be $3 a pack (I don't think brand will matter CHEAP will work as well)or something like that.. any way.. if you don't know of any place to get cig butts about 3 cigs out of a pack should work.. of butts I think I use about 10 or so.. about 2 cups boiled water.. soak for a few hrs to over night.. drain.. should be more than the 5 oz needed of the water..
one way or another I will NOT have spider mite problems this winter!!!
Ohh.. I have used the tobacco water to treat rose bushes for aphids with GREAT sucess!!
Gina *BabyBlue*

I think it so much easier just to use a good hoticultural oil. - Millet

Millet:
I am not sure what I did but most of the leaves of my Fuji turned brown, crispy also, when I used hort oil. But I mixed hort oil and dish soap during that time. That's why I am hessitant to use it again. I thought I was following directions except how much soap to mix.
But I am blaming the soap mix nontheless.

I have had very bad experience of using oil on my citruses. It was used to control scales but then all the leaves fell off during spring, leaving bare limbs, which of course took some time to develop leaves again. On plants that I did not spary oil, they only shed very little leaves.

But here's the trick that I have discovered for myself, although it could be done by others, this is what I came up on my own:

Spray your plants with excessive horticultural oil (twice the recommended) when it is below 75 deg F in the afternoon, when there is less than one hour of sunshine left. Then early in the morning, after sunrise to an hour later, hose off the tree with generous spray of water to remove or wash off the oil. The overnight exposure of insects to the double dosage of oil could cause massive damage to the insects. Since it is night time, it did not damage the plants at all. Come morning time, after the oil has exacted its toll on the intended victims, there is no need for it to linger, so hose it off.

I believe it is the combined instense sunshine and oil that contributes to severe leaf drop. By removing the oil, it does not damage the leaves.

I did precisely that and the insects are mostly gone, but the trees are very healthy with no crispiness or abnormal leaf drops.

Joe:
I thought of the same thing. Hose the hort oil after I applied it after an hour or so but I never follow it through because of my fear having the leaves turn brown again.
Thanks for the encouragement.
I'll follow your suggestion.
Every year I have one fuji apple tree that is a favorite of spider mites and and those white molds that looks like cotton. I am still not successful getting rid of them.
I tried to cut the branches that are infected severely but this is a fully grown matured tree. One of these years it will succombed to the infestation and die.
But there are many branches that are grafted that came from my sister's Japanese apples and it seems like they are not affecting very much with those bugs.

Remember, you will have more incentive to hose off because the oil is double the dosage...

I have been using UltraFine brand horticultural oil for years. I make a 1 percent oil solution, and spray in the evening approximately one or two hours before sunset. I have never rinsed off the oil. In the many years of applying UltraFine, I have never had a problem, not one. If sprayed in the heat of the day, or if applied at a rate greater then recommended on the label, a problem could possibly occur,

I followed recommendations for citrus as stated in the small brochure that sticks to the ultrafine oil. Then followed recommendations from University of Florida Citrus guide not to apply when max air temperature goes above 85 deg F.

I applied during the winter of 2002, it only went to the upper 70's air temperature during the subsequent days after I applied oil as per concentration recommended, but it was full sunshine the whole week, and my glossy oily leaves are exposed to the full sun. The lows were in the mid 30's. And it was calm.

What I suspected is that the plants were dormant, and they could not transpire because the oil served as a barrier, and I believe the almost non-transpiring leaves that were sprayed with oil went beyond 85 deg F. And the fact that it was relatively calm almost windless week, the net radiation intercepted heated the leaves and without mass flow of air, the temperature built up. And so even before spring time, all the leaves dropped. There are quite some details and caveats that the recommendations doesn't point out to you, even if you follow them down to the T. If my application would have been haphazard and not thorough, the leaves would have remained.

This should not happen in a greenhouse setting when the plants are non-dormant and you have fans to mix the air around.

Joe, when a horticulture oil is applied in the evening, or on a cool day, it does not matter what the temperature is the following day. Even if the following day is 95F, there should be no problem Commercial growers in Florida, and the central valley of California, have no way to rinse off their trees, and of course never rinse their trees. The temperature the next day, and the wind conditions the next day, is different time a spray program is applied. Hundreds of millions of citrus trees, are sprayed all summer long through out the hot summer in many USA, and Brazilian groves. The day time temperature in Brazil can get quite hot. I don't know why your tree did what it did, but I strongly doubt it had any thing to do with the horticultural oil. I doubt that the oil on the following day has much of any effect on the function of the leaf stomata. They are not "plugged", they still open and close.

Perhaps what we have experienced are some few details that was omitted for using horticultural oil called winter application. Sometimes the ultrafine oil are called or marketed as dormant oil spray which implies spraying during the winter. While spraying my other temperate trees during the winter, I would very much like to spray all the others so that all possible sources of overwintering pests are eliminated. And that included spraying my citruses during the winter as well, but alas such application at particular weather condition can cause damages to my citruses if I did not rinse them off.

You can test this for yourself, do some trials, apply horticultural oil, various concentrations onto your citruses during the winter, when the citruses have hardened off and became almost dormant, when soil temperature are below 50 deg F, when there's a forecast with a period of cloudless, windless days. There will be significant leaf damages.

The reason why I am trying to remember and share all the minute details as to what has caused the damages, is that you may be able to repeat these conditions that such severe damages could have happened. It will happen again if repeated under the same circumstances.

I have actual experiences and so does Benny and I believe there are others in the same circumstances. We could be wrong on our speculations but not what we have observed and we are sharing those and hopefully others will learn the same to minimize their risk. Perhaps you have other explanations as to why I have only observed severe leaf drop on those portions of my citrus canopies that were sprayed with horticultural oil. I would have dismissed it as anomaly but I have side by side comparisons, I did not spray in one spot, I did on several spots on various trees.

I am not saying that the recommendations for commercial use are wrong. Some details and caveats are missing such as those for application on dormant citruses during the winter. The general temperature stated as recommended does not apply in all cases. That's why we share those specific experiences.

For my goals in the yard, where I have more than 350 fruiting cultivars, there is a need to apply oil during the winter, and would very much like to use stronger concentrations on citruses, simply because the citruses provide better shade and protection for overwintering pests compared to the bare temperate trees. And during some of those times, conditions could be perfect to aggravate winter leaf drop due to application of dormant oil. My trick so far is to apply stronger concentrations towards the evening and hose them off the next morning to minimize leaf damages. I believe no commercial growers are growing side by side 350 fruiting cultivars, with about a fourth of them citruses.

During the summer months, we switch over to a lighter version of oil called All Season to spray on my temperate trees, that type doesn't need any rinsing at all as long as your application falls below the stated maximum air temperature for each particular crop.