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Old August 3, 2015   #21
FLRedHeart
Tomatovillian™
 
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Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: FL 8b/9a
Posts: 262
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Hi Barb and thanks for popping by at this point. I was just not far from you a week ago watching a rocket blast off from south of N. Smyrna Beach, I really like that part of FL.

Right now my keyboard is messed up and the new one won't arrive till later in the week if I'm lucky. So forgive if I'm brief because I wasn't expecting a fun conversation when I dropped in. Typing is with the mouse, also on the fritz, on this little thing called on-screen keyboard, and it's like a 1990s cellphone clicking text away here. It keeps crashing the pc too, so I'll be better in a few days and I refuse to type in text-talk, not into butchering English...

Marsha! Thanks for the sticky card tip :-) I've been through war with the leaf miners, so that has been one of my weapons too. I don't buy them, I make my own and they look the same size. I don't buy any consumables that are RTU, not even fertilizers. I strongly doubt the home made cards are the reason (unless yours have biochemical attractant), but they aren't the solution here for some reason I now need to figure out now that you were so optimistic and that wasn't my experience. I have an idea but need to go over it since it is related to something else I need to improve. If that pic is yours which I think it is, I can't tell the difference between the whiteflies and leaf miners. Mine catch a higher proportion of long legged flies unfortunately and I use six in total, six-feet separations, so very similar to you. Mine are mid plant level hanging on clips, and I just make them sticky on one side.

About the lizards, my experience is in between, and yes my home made traps will really be cruel to an Anolis, especially our native green ones, if you are compassionate you'd cry. The Anolises are an integral part of the IPM team here and my only vertebrate helpers. If I carelessly leave a card laying around the Anolis easily gets trapped, and in its struggles just plasters itself worse and the worse again. Removing them if you see it in time is really painful I'm sure, the way everything including tiny lizard toes stick. Then letting go the exhausted and emaciated friend, and you know he still has gunk on him, but you tenderly put rainwater in his mouth and put him on his way as he barely manages some feeble steps and you leave wondering if a bird gets him wouldn't it be better? I've never had a lizard get caught on a properly hung card which dangles in mid air on a string my way of mounting. Put it on a wall or horizontal even as temporary placement during chores, and don't be surprised to find this. So here, how the card is mounted is what's to watch.

For copper I have copper sulfate. It is a hydrated crystal and available anywhere chemicals are sold. I've had mine so long it is probably 20 years old and I don't recall where I got it or even what country I was living in when I did. But it is so common. Your best bet is to call a nursery especially dealing in commercial Citrus locally if others don't have any, where it is very economical and used for citrus canker. Otherwise buy it from someone cheap on the internet or eBay etc. Pentahydrate. I am not impressed with the staff or products from Southern Ag, one I called and tried to get some basic answers and I had to pull teeth and got nowhere. They are all commodities. The guy who founded that place must no longer be with them. I make everything I use, so l'm biased.

About the Bt mixing, I wrote my impression, but didn't mean it as fact. I'm comfortable with it, but prefer being fact supported, so to be 100% sure we could check the specific product composition with someone in the TS dept if it ever were important and bounce it off them for added insurance.

I just about have hit beyond the pain point on my mouse-board index finger but wanted to say I have no problem with low nighttime setting till 75 F, regardless of what the recommendations are.

It's beyond that where there is a severe blossom drop. By 79-80F I lose all but small toms. If I have plants in Sept they all set. 73-74F lows...big difference it wouldn't be feasible to wait for 71-72F. But we have to deal with multiple freezes here which box our season in.

Cheers
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