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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] vacuuming insects

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  • From: Lucy Goodman <goodows AT infinet.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] vacuuming insects
  • Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 07:13:21 -0400

We have been vacuuming bugs for the past 2 seasons with pretty good success. I believe I was the one who was posting about this last year. We use either a hand vac (for flowers-just look in each bloom to make sure there are no bees and if there are ask them to leave by flicking the flower) or the vacuum on the gas powered chipper shredder (a shop vac may be a better tool than the big chipper shredder but we do not have one and since most need an electrical outlet such a vacuum would not reach to 80% of our crops). So far we have not had a powerful enough vacuum to suck the leaves off the plants (or do much damage) so don't worry about doing such.

One thing we do when vacuuming bugs is have a bucket of SOAPY water to dump the bugs into when your hand vac hopper is full (or the bugs are crawling out of it, which they can do). the soap gets rid of the surface tension on the water so the insects sink and die. Non soapy water does not kill the insects, especially cuke beetles (they will crawl out of plain water and go back to infesting things)


Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Organics
New Paris, OH
Check out the Boulder Belt website:
http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/boulderbeltcsa
"There is no way to peace---peace is the way."
A.J. Muste





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