Drug encyclopedia

Molasses For Organic Pest Control.

One last benefit of molasses is it’s capability to be employed in the control over 2 common pests encountered in gardening. The most widely known use of molasses is it’s capability to help to manage Fire Ants, but we’ve also found a Web reference to the capability of molasses to manage white cabbage moths in the United Kingdom, so molasses may be a useful pest dissuasive in more ways we realize. As we announced before, there are a few references we’ve run across refering to the ability of molasses to manipulate Fire Ants. Since we aren’t closely acquainted with this actual use of molasses, and instead of simply re-write and re-word another’s work, we believed we would defer to the gurus. So for this section of the prevailing version of the Molasses Manual, we may simply post a reference article we discovered that covers subject in better detail than we now can ourselves. Molasses Makes Fire Ants Move Out. Ever started planting in your raised beds and found fire ant highrises? Are you bored with being covered with sores after gardening? Put down that blowtorch and check out these glorious organic and non-toxic solutions. Malcolm Beck1, organic farmer extraordinaire and owner of Garden-Ville Inc, did some experiments that showed clearly that molasses is a good addition to organic manure ( more on fertilizer in the subsequent issue ). When using molasses in the manure spray for his fruit trees he realized that the fire ants moved out from under the trees. I got a chance to see whether molasses really moved fire ants. In my vineyard, I had a five hundred foot row of root stock vines cut back to a stump that required grafting. The fire ants had made themselves at home along that row.

The mounds averaged 3 feet apart. There wasn’t any way someone could work there without being eaten alive! I melted four large spoons of molasses in each gallon of water and sprayed along the drip pipe. By the day after the fire ants had moved 4 feet in each direction. We were able to graft the vines without a single ant disturbing us. This gave him the concept for developing an organic fire ant killer that’s thirty percent orange oil and 70% liquid compost made of dung and molasses. The orange oil softens and melts the ant’s exoskeleton, making them at the mercy of attack by the microbes in the compost, while the molasses feeds the microbes and also smothers the ants. After the insects are dead, everything becomes energy-rich soil conditioner and won’t harm any plant it touches. It can be employed on any insect including mosquitoes and their larvae. Break a tiny hole in the crust in the middle of the mound then quickly!!! Tip the solution into the hole to flood the mound and then drench the ants on top. Big mounds may need a second application. Available at Garden-Ville Square in Stafford, it has got an agreeable lemonade smell. According to Mark Bowen2, local landscaper and Houston habitat gardening expert, fire ants flourish on troubled land and bright grassy areas. Organic material gives a good habitat for fire ant predators like constructive nematodes, fungi, for example. Other conditions favoring fire ant predators include shading the ground with plantings, good soil construction practices and usage of plants taller than turfgrasses. he endorses pouring boiling soapy water over shallow mounds or using AscendTM. Rise is a fire ant bait which has a fungal derivative called avermectin and a corn and soybean-based grit bait to draw in fire ants. Rise works slowly enough to get the queen or queens and it controls ants by sterilizing and / or murdering them outright. As we had also discussed earlier, while researching the usages of molasses in gardening, we also discovered a reference to it’s use in the control over white cabbage moths. Here is what we found on that actual subject.