A Lesson Learned TODAY.....

[bunny56lbc]

NEVER ,NEVER,NEVER,NEVER,NEVER......SPRAY DISH SOAP ON LOTUS PADS !   

Sure it killed the Japnese beatles on the flowers....BUT I just had to get a little carried away & spray it on the pads too....     :'( :'(  .





I think I used just a little too much dish soap  anyway.... 




OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH WELLL LEASON LEARNED !

Maybe I can pretend they're a new kind of lotus that has "choclate " colored pad's..... 
bonnie

[karen J]

Interesting... my kid's bubbles cause the same thing. I learned that a couple years ago. Now, if they want to blow bubbles they are required to go way out on the lawn... nowhere near the Lotus.

[Indiana Karen]

Oh wow, I've done dumb stuff too. :'(
Looks like the buds are OK though.

Karen

[Bonnie]

I would have never thought that dish soap would do that.. who woulda known?

I hope it doesn't affect your buds/blooms.. I actually like the green and brown leaves!  Oh wouldn't a variegated lotus be beautiful?

[El Jefe]

 OUCH!!!!  :'( I thought I was the the King lotus killer whatever you do if you cut the pads back do it above the water line. My Lotus had a big heart and forgave me maybe yours will too!

I have learned to use neems oil for most pests and it works great.

For centuries, India's farmers have known that the trees withstand the periodic infestations of locusts. Indian scientists took up neem research as far back as the 1920s, but their work was little appreciated elsewhere until 1959 when a German entomologist witnessed a locust plague in the Sudan. During this onslaught of billions of winged marauders, Heinrich Schmutterer noticed that neem trees were the only green things left standing: although the locusts settled on the trees in swarms, they always left without feeding. To find out why, he and his students have studied the components of neem ever since.

Schmutterer's work (as well as a 1962 article by three Indian scientists showing that neem extracts applied to vegetable crops would repel locusts) spawned a growing amount of lively research.

Like most plants, neem deploys internal chemical defences to protect itself against leaf- chewing insects. Its chemical weapons are extraordinary, however. In tests over the last decade, entomologists have found that neem materials can affect more than 200 insect species as well as some mites, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, and even a few viruses. The tests have included several dozen serious farm and household pests - Mexican bean beetles, Colorado potato beetles, locusts, grasshoppers, tobacco budworms, and six species of cockroaches, for example. Success has also been reported on cotton and tobacco pests in India, Israel, and the United States; on cabbage pests in Togo, Dominican Republic, and Mauritius; on rice pests in the Philippines; and on coffee bugs in Kenya. And it is not just the living. plants that are shielded. Neem products have protected stored corn, sorghum, beans, and other foods against pests for up to 10 months in some very sophisticated controlled experiments and field trials.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been studying neem since 1972. In laboratory experiments, they have found that the plant's ingredients foil even some of America's most voracious garden pests. For instance, in one trial each half of several soybean leaves was sprayed with neem extracts and placed in a container with Japanese beetles. The treated halves remained untouched, but within 48 hours the other halves were consumed right down to their woody veins. In fact, the Japanese beetles died rather than eat even tiny amounts of neem-treated leaf tissue. In field tests, neem materials have yielded similarly promising results. For instance, in one test in Ohio, soybeans sprayed with neem extract stayed untouched for up to 14 days, untreated plants in the same field were chewed to pieces by various species of insects, seemingly overnight.

Neem contains several active ingredients, and they act in different ways under different circumstances. These compounds bear no resemblance to the chemicals in today's synthetic insecticides. Chemically, they are distant relatives of steroidal compounds, which include cortisone, birth-control pills, and many valuable pharmaceuticals. Composed only of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, they have no atoms of chlorine, phosphorus, sulfur, or nitrogen (such as are commonly found in synthetic pesticides). Their mode of action is thus also quite different.

Neem products are unique in that (at least for most insects) they are not outright killers. Instead, they alter an insect's behavior or life processes in ways that can be extremely subtle. Eventually, however, the insect can no longer feed or breed or metamorphose, and can cause no further damage.

For example, one outstanding neem component, azadirachtin, disrupts the metamorphosis of insect larvae. By inhibiting molting, it keeps the larvae from developing into pupae, and they die without producing a new generation. In addition, azadirachtin is frequently so repugnant to insects that scores of different leaf-chewing species - even ones that normally strip everything living from plants - will starve to death rather than touch plants that carry traces of it.

Another neem substance, salannin, is a similarly powerful repellent. It also stops many insects from touching even the plants they normally find most delectable. Indeed, it deters certain biting insects more effectively than the synthetic chemical called "DEET" (N,N-diethy- lm-toluamide), which is now found in hundreds of consumer insect repellents.

To obtain the insecticides from this tree is simple (at least in principle). The leaves or seeds are merely crushed and steeped in water, alcohol, or other solvents. For some purposes, the resulting extracts can be used without further refinement.

These pesticidal "cocktails," containing 4 major and perhaps 20 minor active compounds, can be astonishingly effective. In concentrations of less than one-tenth of a part per million, they affect certain insects dramatically. In trials in The Gambia, for example, these crude neem extracts compared favorably with the synthetic insecticide malathion in their effects on some of the pests of vegetable crops. In Nigeria, they equaled the effectiveness of DDT, Dieldrin, and other insecticides. And elsewhere in the world these plant products have often showed results as good as those of standard pesticides.

Although pests can become tolerant to a single toxic chemical such as malathion, it seems unlikely that they can develop genetic resistance to neem's complex blend of compounds - many functioning quite differently and on different parts of an insect's life cycle and physiology:For example, even after being exposed to neem for 35 successive generations, diamondback moths remained as susceptible as they had been at the beginning.

Another valuable quality is that some neem compounds act as systemic agents in certain plant species. That is, they are absorbed by, and transported throughout, the plants. In such cases, aqueous neem extracts can merely be sprinkled on the soil. The ingredients are then absorbed by the roots, pass up through the stems, and perfuse the upper parts of the plant. In this way, crops become protected from within. In trials, the leaves and stems of wheat, barley, rice, sugarcane, tomatoes, cotton, and chrysanthemums have been protected from certain types of damaging insects for 10 weeks in this way.Because systemic materials are inside the plant, they cannot be washed off by rain

[Monica]

Ouch that sucks.  I hope they don't die and they are ok.  At least you got buds  .

[Jonna]

That's interesting about the Neem.  In Merida, where we are renovating a house, Neem trees are grown and recommended for mosquito repelling.  There is a farm outside the city that will sell you the trees fairly cheaply as they want a lot of them planted in the area.  Supposedly planting 2 or 3 trees around the perimeter of your yard will keep mosquitoes out of your yard.  I may try it. 

[Ky Kim]

Oh man, that stinks.  You buds look good though, I think it will bounce back alright.

Kim

[thepitclub]

Oh my.  :'(

I did this to my pepper plants earlier this spring after I read about some concoction of water, dish soap and a tiny bit of vegetable oil (to control aphids). Unfortunately I must have missed the part about mild dish soap, and used Dawn with bleach alternative. BAD idea. All the leaves turned brown and eventually fell off. Even two months later now, only one has slightly recovered. I'll try to remember to get you a pic of the end result if I remember today.

I'll cross my fingers for you that your end result with lotus is better than mine with the peppers. 

[bunny56lbc]

So far it only affected the top part of the pads . The Under side is still green & it doesn't seem to affect the bloom's ....they're still blooming like crazy ! I had five of them bloom today but unfortunally I couldn't get any pic's cause one of my 100 gal. ponds sprung a leak & I had to put a new liner in.
Luckly I ordered a few extra 10 x 10 's incase something happened...  . AND the fun never ends! 

That's interesting about the Neem... like Jonna said .

I see more new pads comming up . I did trim off a of the brown one's...well above the water El Jefe .
I don't want to drown them.....

bonnie

[Bonnie]

Sorry about your leak Bonnie, good thing that you were prepared!

You know that we expect pix tomorrow though!

[emm]

You will find that you can reduce damage caused by the dish soap by spraying plants when it is cloudy, in the early morning or in the evening and rinsing the soap spray off after about 30 minutes.  The soap kills the insect on contact, it does not act as a preventative.  This means the insect is killed when the soap and water mix covers it's body; it is not killed by eating a leaf with soapy residue on it.  It is also a good idea to try out the soap spray on a couple of leaves 24 - 48 hours before spraying the whole plant.  Some plants are damaged easily by soap spray - begonia, impatiens, Japanese maple and azalea are all sensitive and there are many more as well. 

I've tried out the neem oil too and found it to be very effective although I don't have much experience with it.

Hope this helps.  emm

[bunny56lbc]

Thx for the info emm ....I should've never sprayed those pads.... .
Ok , so where can I get the neem oil ? At Wally world or do I have to buy it online ?
bonnie

[Sean]

They will look cruddy this year but return with a vengeance next year.

Cheers,
Sean

[tranquility]

Ahhhhh...... bummer Bonnie  :'(
Lawanna