North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> Bill, while I hesitate to recommend it, since I think it established 
> itself in my yard so now I have no butterflies any more, but BT is 
> safe to use around flowering strawberries, and should kill off any 
> moth larvae around.


Thanks. I've used it elsewhere, with varying results, but I don't think 
I've tried it on the pears. It seems to work great on the gooseberries, 
to keep those fast green worms (whatever they are) out of the fruit. (I 
had a ton of them the first year, but one or two sprays a year with Bt 
seems to eliminate the problem entirely.) But it didn't do anything to 
the oriental fruit moths that infest my peaches, despite multiple sprays.

I've still got butterflies around (cabbage moths especially, but not 
just the pests), so I apparently don't use it too much. And I can't 
imagine that any other spray would be kinder to them.


> Sorry to hear of your mycophobia, hope you can get over it if you ever 
> have a chance to eat corn smut again.


Heh, heh. I used to pick all sorts of mushrooms in the wild. But I 
needed to be pretty sure of what I was eating. I don't know enough about 
corn smut to be certain there's nothing else that could be mistaken for it.

Frankly, I didn't even look at it. I was just guessing that the huge 
mound of... something growing on the cob, under the leaves, was corn 
smut. But as I say, I don't know much about it.

And I've got so many fruits and vegetables to try to eat in the summer, 
before they spoil, that I'm not looking for anything else to fix (unless 
it would go well with bacon and tomato sandwiches!).

:-)

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
Why not go out on a limb? That's where the fruit is. - Will Rogers