Fighting vermin: Summertime vermintime
The summertime not only gives us pleasant warmth, but also for the ones with six or eight feet that love the green growth. Especially the greenhouse red spider mite loves a warm and dry climate and if you see the little ones walking, the harm already has been done. The red spider mite not only tap the fluids from the plant with every bite, there also stays a mark on the leafs. That’s why the plant cannot perform photosynthesis. Also the tissue of the spider-bite close the plant more and more from the air. The plant is weakened by many sides and is getting weaker by the hour. This is the moment that the grower has to go to the grow-shop (or to another place where you can buy vermin fighters) and get some help. If the whole harvest is threatens to die, a very strong matter is often used. But when this matter is harmless, irritating be very dangerous for your health and the precautions necessarily taken, is often left out of consideration.
Most pesticides are made for use in free nature or in greenhouses, which, comparing with most of the growing-places, are much bigger. If pesticides have to be used in a greenhouse, it is obliged by law to protect the co-worker for 100% against all kind of influences of the chemicals. This can mean: gloves, special suits and a mask for breathing After the treatment the greenhouses are ventilated and a certain time has to pass before any work can be done. In home growing it often is a different story. The space is often low-pitched and is full of plants, what diminishes the moving-space of the grower. Natural ventilation lacks most of the times, because the light and smell would come outside, unfiltered. Working with gloves in this heath is a torment and a mask for breathing or protection-glasses let run down the sweat in big floods.
Working with pesticides in small oppressive rooms is causing a lot more danger than in big greenhouses or at the outside.
Measures at mixing ready-to-use solutions
A pesticide is often offered in highly concentrated packages and has to be mixed with water before use. Contact with skin and eyes have to be absolutely avoided, because these concentrates can be very irritating or biting and can go through the skin also in concentrated form. Working with gloves and/or glasses is highly recommendable. You have to work on an easy height (table) and not on the ground. Do not work under hot lamps, because the concentrate can go directly to your lungs. It can also be dangerous if parts of the pesticides are mingled with fertilizers or a base. So do not measure your nutrition in the same tray. If you buy a matter that’s already has useful dosage, you have no trouble with this.
Measures while squirting
During the squirting there is a big chance to inhale the pesticides. It can also go through your skin. If you use irritating or poisoned matters it is necessary to work with masks for breathing. The evaporations of the pesticide are getting stronger by the heath of the lamps (especially in small, low-pitched rooms). Very important for the use of every squirting-matter (if it is dangerous or not), is that every part of the plant that is infected (also the underside of the leafs) are hit. That means you have to do this quiet and careful. So take care that you not have to cough or that your eyes are burning, when you are only halfway. That is very bad for your harvest, because you don’t fight the vermin well.
Clothes and hairs are after the squirting of the vermin also soaked with the used matter and you can at best put the clothes immediately in the washing machine or use them next time. This is of course particularly important if the growing room is in the living room. A safe use of poisoned or irritating squirt-matters is difficult to realize. It asks for an air-tight shut-off part of the house (some means can easily damp through walls - look at the bottom at groups of matters). The ventilation has to be put on maximum, after the necessary initial period, to remove the remainder.
Growing-lamps have a part of the UV-light in the spectrum. UV-light breaks off biological and chemical substances and according to the representative of the Minister of Agriculture the lamps can produce very dangerous substances by beaming. It is hardly investigated how the waiting period of for instance matters for the growing of vegetables and fruit changes, if it handles about growing weed (the sticky outside can absorb and hold lot more substances than a cucumber). And if the waiting period for the vegetables are sufficient, it you don’t eat it but smoke it.
Never ever mingle concentrated pesticides because all kind of reactions can take place and you can not predict it (so do not make a mix).
A categorization
A pesticide which is permitted in Holland, has always, in the original package, information about the contents, way of use, warnings and waiting periods. The relevant pesticides mainly work in two ways.
The pesticides can be divided in:
Organic fatty acids do their work in contact and weaken the parasites. They are quite harmless for people.
Natural and synthetic pyrethroid like permethrin work as a nerve-poison against insects like plant louse.
Phosphorus-acid ester dichlorvos, parathion (E605) malation work as a breath-poison*
Tinorgan connections (acaricide = anti red spider mite, many of those are very poisonous)
Others are: carbamate, acylharn-substances, amidine, dinitrofenol, thiocyanate.
* Phosphorus-acid ester (and also the carbamate) block an enzyme that controls the nerve-impulse. When admitted a permanent stimulation of the nerves is caused. This will kill the insects and the red spider mites, but can, used careless, provide the human being sickness, diarrhea, spasms, lower the blood pressure and paralyze the breath (the nerve-gasses tabun and sarin also belong to the Phosphorus-acid esters). Some of these are very volatile chemicals and are potentially dangerous for the plants themselves, because they can burn. To prevent this, you have to wet the ground very well, before treatment, because otherwise the roots, and therefor the plant, is getting damaged. Also the squirting in the evening is good, because it causes during the night (when the light is out) less evaporation and demolition. When applied wrong or when used regularly, most matters will not work any more, because the insects and mites get used to it (get resistant). Use of pesticides is very difficult and can give many problems.
The most harmless method of fighting insects for the grower and the consumer is the use of natural enemies like mite and gallflies etc. Simple tricks, like disinfecting the nursery after every harvest, keep the cuttings before the planting in quarantine for a few days or plunge or disinfect them, can prevent an epidemic in the blooming-phase.
By improve the climate in the nursery, most infections with insects can be prevented. Nurseries that get infected over and over again by red spider mite, have a too dry climate. By squirting the plants with water regularly, (once a day) the mites are less mobile for 50% and it is very satisfying to watch the little creatures having trouble on their highways (the spin ropes) to climb over the droplets over and over again.
By keeping the conditions of growing (temperature, air-humidity, suction and adding of air) optimal, the natural resistance of the plants are getting higher. Prevent phenomenon’s of lack by using fertilizer regular but moderate (over-fertilizing weakens the plants by wasting energy - Highlife June 1999: transport and logistics inside the plants). Spoil the plants with root and bloom supplements, which by adding of many vital maters (enzymes, vitamins, sugars and amino acids) bring extra energy for the plants.
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