alpine flowers at Grey Rock

Friday, July 23, 2010

Diatomaceous Earth


Diatomaceous Earth, DE for short, is made up of diatoms, old sea bed creatures collected from dry lakes around the Great Basin area. The fossilized creatures have very spiny bodies which when applied to plants where soft bodied insects lurk, tend to poke holes in those critters such as aphids or larval stages of bugs. This picture is a not so good DE application on hot pepper plants that the ants had farmed some aphids on. Yes, ants raise aphids so they can get the nectar the aphids suck out. Not sure exactly how it works, one of those symbiotic things. DE can be applied with a duster(mine died) or a flour sifter or even a sieve. Just don't breath the dust as those same silica particles can lodge in lung tissue forever.

2 comments:

  1. You were right about the leaf miners. The small white egg clusters on the underside of the leaves was a dead give away.

    Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one of my favorite books of all time. I am saving seed for the first time this year and have collected more Miners lettuce seed than Ill need for 10 years.

    Now, next problem. I have wonderful potato plants in my front yard and one of them slowly turned yellow and just went down. What happened?

    Best.

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  2. No worries, I think it is time to harvest your potatoes! They do that when they are finished. We are harevsting our now.

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