Battling Insects & Weeds! 😬🌿// Garden Answer

hey guys how's it going so I'm out in the garden working today nothing major no big projects I'm just kind of fussing in some flowerbeds but I've been noticing a few different issues kind of popping up in certain areas of my garden and they're ones that kind of typically happened this time of year so I just wanted to talk about them a little bit I'm usually when it gets warmer out like we're in the 90s right now and we have been for a few days and it looks like it's gonna be pretty consistent from this point on and we'll just get warmer from there but that's when I notice a huge boom in the population of both weeds and insects and I'm dealing with a particular problem on my plants on some of them where my leaves are getting skeletonized let me show you so here are the leaves all these green ones are off of salvia you can see they're heavily skeletonized look at that you can see right through them and then some coleus leaves which initially I thought this was all just hail damage which I think the bigger like the bigger rips are from hail because these plants were all exposed but all of this skeleton nation is definitely not just from hail I've got something eating on them and you don't want to let a problem like this carry on because the plants need the tissue on their leaves in order to photosynthesize properly so if you have this start to spread all over your plant you just let the insects keep going they can really really damage the health of your plant like the overall like vigor of the plant will be reduced and if it carries on I think it can eventually kill your plant so you do want to get on it if you see something like this going on in your garden and here I live in Eastern Oregon zone five high desert there's usually three things we look for some kind of a beetle or the larva stage of the beetle which you can usually find during the daytime earwigs which you can usually find anytime of the day which i think is what I'm dealing with here or it might be some type of a caterpillar or slug so the first thing you want to do is go inspect your plant and you can do that right in the middle of the day and see if you can find the culprit which sometimes you can and then you can take care of the problem right away but sometimes they're a little bit more elusive which is kind of what I'm dealing with I cannot find what is eating this plant the second thing you can do is go out in the evening or when it's dark because caterpillars and slugs they feed in the night so you can go out with a flashlight and look particularly on the underside of the leaves and see if you can find anything eating on your plant sometimes it takes a while like you have to inspect some plants because they're sneaky and they they can hide really really easily so you just want to make a thorough inspection of your plants to see if you can see what you're dealing with because whatever you need to use to combat that bug it might be a little different depending on what it is and so I can't find what's eating on my plant so I'm kind of gonna treat it with a two prong approach here I think it's probably earwigs because those seem the most prevalent in my garden right now but I don't necessarily want to just run out and just put a bait down for earwigs if that's not what's going on because one it won't necessarily take care of the problem and earwigs are not all bad I know they look nasty and they're creepy little bugs and I don't like them especially if they come in our house but they also eat other insects and they feed on like decaying composting material at the base of your plants so they do some good as well so since I'm not sure I'm using two different types of baits both of them actually have one of the same active ingredients which is spinosa which is a bacteria that's naturally found in the soil and one of them is a pellet and one of them is a powder so I'm gonna do kind of a foliar plant application of the spinosa and then also the pellet around the base just in case the earwigs or slugs is what I'm dealing with so here they are right here let me kind of line them up and kind of cast a shadow over them so we've got the bug and slug killer which I've showed you before and I'll probably show you again because it works really well so first off it kills slugs and snails which I know a lot of you guys have big issues with those we get slugs a little bit but we're so dry that we don't deal with those a lot thankfully but there's a lot of things on the label for this insecticide so earwigs are on the label cutworms which a lot of people have dealings with in vegetable gardens in particular but this one is more of a pellet so you can see down in there they're more of a grain so it's nothing that's gonna actually adhere to a leaf and take care of anything that's actually on the plant it'll take care of whatever's crawling to the plant and that's where this one right here comes in I just figured that if I'm out there baiting I want to make sure that I'm just doing a real good job so I don't have to do it again so the dust will kind of adhere to the tops of the and on the undersides and we'll take care of anything that crawls up the plant well this one will take care of things that are crawling around on the ground and hopefully keep them away from the plant and the difference here hopefully this doesn't spill huh this one has iron phosphate as well which is I believe what takes care of your slugs and snails in addition to this one oh Sid and I like the idea of doing it this way because one they're both for organic gardening and I'm not spraying anything that has any kind of strong residual they're not going on any sort of blooms I can keep it away from that it's not gonna hurt anything that's flying around so no honey bees and butterflies so I feel like if I'm dealing with an insect problem I try to deal with it as responsibly as possible in fact if you know you're dealing with some kind of a caterpillar issue I brought this out because we're already using this here on our property this is thorough side the active ingredient is back sillas thuringiensis or BT which is a bacteria found in the soil as well and what it does is it's a very targeted specific insecticide that kills caterpillars so very good for like cabbage or a lot of different vegetables we use it on our petunias and calibrachoa because we get bud worms horribly bad and if you're not going to spray this and look if you plan to not spray this and you may as well not plant those annuals it's not worth it because they eat all the flowers to where the whole plant is just green and you're not enjoying any of like the fruits of your labor for planting those so we actually have to spray this on a weekly basis here for usually like three or four weeks to get on top of and preventatively keep bud worms out of our property so if that's what you're dealing with this is a really good spray for that so now I want to go show you the actual plants and show you where I'm dealing with it and then I'll show you how I apply the bait grab my gloves so here we are we're kind of behind at the gazebo right now and I planted some of these new coleus they're new for next year they're called wicked-hot and I really want them to do well they're looking pretty other than the fact that bugs found them so the first thing I'm going to do is sprinkle a little bit of bait around the base of each plant and then I will dust them with some powder and each one of these lids has like a spoon like you can do a lot or you can do a little which I'll be using this setting on both of them that flap so there's the coleus and it's been baited very well now it doesn't look the best but it won't last for very long typically we get the problem under control in about a week and then we can hose off any remaining dust after that is done now you do want to make sure if you're applying the dust to not do it on a windy day and it's very very still today just a very slight breeze and you want to get as uniform of a layer as possible both on the top and the underside of the leaf so what I do is just kind of like dust some of it on top and then I take my glove and just kind of rough the plant up and that usually puffs enough of that dust up in the air that a lot of it ends up on the bottom side of these leaves as well so I did also run back to the barn and I grabbed a spray just in case you don't want to do the powder route or the bait route I just happen to use a lot of these because I do a lot of this bait for any kind of slugs I have a lot of hostas so I just try to make sure to use this liberally to take care of any problem that might arise so I always have that on hand but if you want to go with a spray rather than you know kind of marring the look of your ornamentals like that even though it's for a short amount of time you can use something like this this is a sulfur and pyrethrin based spray earwigs are on the label you just want to make sure if you're using a contact spray insecticide that you use it responsibly and at the right time of day I think the most important thing is just educating yourself if you are 100 percent unsure as to what bug you're dealing with you want to take a picture of the plant maybe take a sample of the leaf or if you find a bug and just don't know what it is take that in a little baggie into your garden center and have them identify it and let you know what the best method of attack is that way you're not like wasting money on things and you're using the right kind of stuff and then depending on what method you used you just want to make sure you're using it responsibly so like this spray right here is more of a contact insecticide so you don't want to be spraying this right in the middle of the day when the honey bees and the butterflies are out feeding on flowers especially if you're spraying or treating something that flowers because that can hurt your honeybees and you don't want to do that so the best time to use it even if it is an organic spray is at dusk after the honeybees go down for the evening and they're not out feeding anymore just use things as a respond as you can so let's go over to the salvia plants and I'll show you those because they're looking pretty sad we're up by the brick patio area now these are the three Indiglo girl salvia as I planted earlier on this spring and just look at them look at the damage I kind of let these go a little bit too long I have cut them back so they have a first little bit of their first bloom still left and they have a lot of buds forming but boy they're not going to do very well if I keep letting whatever is eating them eat them so let's get these baited salvia is done and the powder doesn't look near as bad on these as it does on the coleus because the color contrast of foliage is not quite as bad to the white powder but anyway we got a nice really even layer of powder on all of these plants so we should be seeing some improvement really soon so insects are one of the problems I deal with this time of year and I haven't seen a whole lot yet like usually I'm dealing with spider mites and grasshoppers and I haven't seen any issues with that yet I'm just mainly dealing with well as far as insects I've seen with my own eyes earwigs ants and bud worms which the bug and slug bait will take care of the ants in the earwigs and that thorough side will take care of the bud worms so it really doesn't take much to keep on top of those the second thing is weeds and I get that question a lot how we maintain our flowerbeds and keep them so weed free first of all they are never weed free I never have a weed free pop property I wish I did but that is just not the nature of it things grow really quickly if I were to let everything let go it would just be a matter of like weeks before it looked horrible and that weed started to take over that's just the way it goes in flowerbeds and inside like the interior of my garden we hand pull most everything we just kind of take a systematic approach to it and we go flower bed five by flower bed and we weed groom and maintain like deadhead things and just keep it on a pretty rigid schedule if we stay to that schedule I find that we keep on top of it it never becomes a huge burden because there isn't very much to do if you just get out there and you know you kind of make a habit of it and it's actually really nice to go through and kind of see some nice tangible results to your work but not feel like you're working your fingers to the bone like trying to take care of an entire field of weeds because you've let it go too long but we do have a lot of gravel areas like the area I'm standing in right now we have a lot of driveway that we have to maintain and there's no way that we can hand pull all of the weeds that come up in the driveway so I'm really excited to try out this natural weed killer let me show it to you this is in a ready-to-use container it's called burn out its active ingredients are citric acid and clove oil you can get it in a concentrate but this one has like the little race bout right there I had to put four double A batteries in the sprayer but I think I can continue to use that like if I get some concentrate I can continue to use that sprayer with that kind of spray in it a couple of good things that I've been reading about it now I don't have a whole lot of personal experience with it yet I've used here and there this spring I'm in fact I didn't Instagram stories about it and then I completely forgot to update it I used it when it was much cooler outside and I sprayed a grass and a broadleaf in that story and it did eventually kill him but it took a little bit longer because it was cooler out although it does say it's effective down to 40 degrees which is pretty cool like I don't know you know most of us aren't out there spraying weeds when it's under 40 degrees I don't think but it's safe around people and pets which is a huge deal I know a lot of us want something that we can use that we don't have to worry about it's peace of mind now that Benjamin's out here he loves to play out here he like wants nothing more than to be outside so I don't want to use things that could potentially hurt him and it doesn't translocate which means it doesn't like some sprays you spray it and then if it's really hot like the fumes can affect things that are around it I think that's kind of typical of to 4d this one doesn't do that wherever you spray it that's where it stays it doesn't leach out into the soil or anything like that it'll also kill both broadleaf and grasses it's not a selective killer so you can't go out and spray a dandelion in your grass because it will kill the grass around it as well so keep that in mind it's just a broad use herbicide so now I want to take you guys back behind the barn I did section off a little spot where there are some weeds that they're not super thick because we have been keeping up on them around here but I think there's enough back there where we can see some results so let's head back there okay do you see that spot I've got four steaks with some string and inside I've got little elm seedlings kind of popping up all over in the gravel and you can see them all over in here and that's what I want to spray they're kind of thick right in there and I probably should have included this little spot in here so I'll just go ahead and spray these as well but it's really easy like once you get it set up in the setups easy too I'm like you just drop a little string or tube down in this container and then put your four double A's in right there and then we've got to switch it off the lock position so it is on and then you just pull the trigger just like that so now I'm just gonna do this whole little square area and then we'll go see if we can find some bigger weeds because it would be fun to see like how oh I see one right away that'll be easy we'll run over here in a second we'll get a bigger weed sprayed so I'm done with that little square now check this out right over here I've got a nice big weed coming up through these boards right here so we'll go ahead and get this one all sprayed and now I'm noticing tons that are coming up back here okay so now I want to take this up kind of - they past your area and kind of mess with the nozzle a little bit because I think you can get it to where it's more of a steady stream instead of a spray and that way you can stand and just walk along and spray the weeds so let's head up there okay so we're up in the pasture area and you can see look at the state of our native soil it is so white and just dry it's so high alkaline but you can see the weeds kind of around in this area so this will be a really good spot to test this out so I'm going to set up the camera and just see how the spray gun works I do love that the sprayers operated by batteries instead of like having to use a pump sprayer where you have to put your back into it a lot to pump up your sprayer to get it to work the other thing about sprays like this you do want to make sure you're spraying on a nice day I'm not a windy day because if you're spraying anything like this and it's really gusty it can blow you know some of the spray over onto a plant that maybe you don't want to spray and you also want to make sure that there's no rain predicted or you don't have your sprinklers turn on in that area for at least a couple hours it says it's rain proof in one hour but I like to spray where I know I have a good like four to six hours to let the active ingredients really soak into the weeds and do their job the label says that you'll see results in just hours but I'm looking forward to seeing what it looks like after several hours like right now we're kind of mid-afternoon so I'm excited to go out this evening and see if the weeds look any different than they do right now or if it takes till tomorrow or that sort of thing all right guys future Laura here I wanted to give you an update on how the burnout worked so it's been I believe three days yep three days since I sprayed the burnout so I wanted to show you what the weeds are looking like so most of the area that I sprayed looks like this you can see all of the dead Brown weeds in here kind of in between the rocks there are a few still that look like they're just sick like they're on their way out and then there were a couple more you can see right over here that aren't looking like they're super healthy cheddar really wants to get involved so I feel like it worked pretty well back here you know this spot that's right behind the barn stays in the shade pretty much all day long and then the weeds up in the pasture area that I sprayed her in full Sun all day long and those are dead so based on personal experience it seems like it works faster when they are exposed to full Sun and a lot more heat but you know even back here even if you have to come through and spray some of this harder to kill weeds like elm seedlings or weeds that have been allowed to grow a little bit bigger even if you have to hit in more than one time it's okay because is organic and it's just so much better than those harsher synthetic chemicals that you know you would spray instead so let's head up to the pasture area and I'll show you how those are looking you can see that you know the other day there were just like mounding green weeds up in this area and I kind of sprayed this spot up to that little drain area up there I didn't get everything I don't think but I sprayed the biggest ones and you can see how they're looking that's how I want them to look really good results up here and there were a bunch of little weeds around this drain and those appear to be gone at this point so those are the results of this test round and I will be using it throughout this whole season and I'm going to try out several different things I'm going to try out you know frequency of spraying also maybe mixing up my own in my own pubs pump sprayer with a concentrate and then adding in a spreader sticker which helps the active ingredients adhere to the leaves of the weeds instead of maybe beating up and rolling off a little bit more maybe that will speed up results a little bit but thus far I'm pleased with the results so I will probably be reporting back to you guys throughout the season just to let you know what I find out so that's pretty much it for today's video I just wanted to show you guys some of the stuff I'm currently dealing with in my garden and kind of how I attack it because I really don't want to spend a ton of effort and work and money making my garden look a certain way and just let it go all to insects and weeds which can take over really quickly so I like to try to take care of problems quick when I first see something happening and that way I only have to apply insecticides very sparingly really I mean I can do it in very localized areas I don't have to blanket insecticide my whole place and that way I just feel like it's a better it's a better way to go and accuse my plants happier and healthier and looking a whole lot better and it makes my life easier to like this kind of thing right here you know I spend a lot less time on my hands and knees pulling weeds if I can find something that's natural that will take care of it for me so anyway thank you guys so much for watching this video and we will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Garden Answer

Views: 209,251

Rating: 4.9534883 out of 5

Keywords: Garden, Answer, Laura, Flower, gardening, gardener, beautiful, succulents, diy, grow, green, Proven, Winners, Fall, Winter, summer, spring, plant, planting, growing, plants, succulent, shrubs, shrub, bush, soil, dirt, earth

Id: rNDE-AtbYc0

Length: 20min 40sec (1240 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 17 2019