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lostsoul62

Bug B gone

lostsoul62
9 years ago

Like everyone I have bugs in my lawn and garden. About 10 days ago I put a bag of bug B gon enough for 12,500 square feet on my 4 or 5,000 square foot lawn. I watered it down and it rained. A medium rain. I mow the lawn a couple of days later and no bugs then yesterday about a 10 days later I work on my lawn and I got eat up by the bugs. So I figure to use enough for 10,000 square feet but this time I'm going to use it on my shrub and tree area which is over 1,000 square foot and has about 10 cubic yards of mulch and do it first thing in the morning when there is due on the lawn. I'll put the Bug B gon on and then water for 30 or 40 minutes and don't count on the rain because I can't control the amount. Any suggestions because I'm new at this?

Comments (4)

  • morpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
    9 years ago

    Exceeding the recommended dose is never a good idea, nor repeating it if it wasn't effective. Most of the insects that Bug B Gone would target are native to your lawn anyway.

    (As a sidenote, I'm not a fan of destroying insect life in your lawn. Most of it has no interest in nibbling on you, and much of it is micro-arthropods in the soil that process organic material back into the ground for you--you just killed those off and restoring them will take some time).

    There's no effective way to abolish mosquitoes, midges, or most other biting insects from your lawn. They're entirely capable of flying from location to location as their food source (humans and other animals) move around.

  • rhizo_1 (North AL) zone 7
    9 years ago

    My suggestion is that you never use (or misuse) any more pesticides, ever.

    The only way to avoid getting "eat up" by insects is to slather your self with repellent. What kinds of insects are they? Depending upon what they are, there might be cultural things you can do.

  • dchall_san_antonio
    9 years ago

    I agree with leaving bugs alone unless they are destroying something. Bugs which destroy stuff include carpenter ants, termites, chinch bugs, leaf cutter ants, fire ants, crazy ants, aphids, sod webworms, and certain grubs. But if all you have is cockroaches, flies, beetles, pill bugs, praying mantis, ladybugs, earwigs, and other normal wildlife bugs, leave them alone. There are a few nuisance bugs, including fleas and ticks, which you might want to treat for, but I would still not use a non selective chemical insecticide.

    You might want to look online for Guardian Beneficial Nematodes. These beneficial nematodes carry an insect disease which kills many insects within a day or two.

  • morpheuspa (6B/7A, E. PA)
    9 years ago

    It is, perhaps, odd of me, but I'll tolerate sod webworms in small numbers, along with aphids. The webworms don't do enough damage in small numbers to be worth the punch I'd have to give the rest of the insect community to get rid of them (and I find the little fluttering adults amusing).

    I've never actually seen webworms get to large enough numbers to cause a problem. Hunters always seem to control the population all by themselves.

    Aphids in reasonable numbers are unable to do much damage to plants, and supply a food source to attract ladybugs to my gardens. I like ladybugs.

    In larger numbers, aphids control well with simple soapy water, so they're a trivial problem anyway. I regularly inject soap through my fertigation system, so aphid issues are pretty much zero.