Dchall_San_Antonio wrote:
How long have you been on a fully organic program in your garden? Usually after a few months of organics with no synthetics, large populations of any insect seem to go away. Why? Because the birds, toads, lizards, and geckos return to maintain insect population control.
I started an organic program approximately a year ago. I work outside the US and am gone for months at a time and last year, during the drought in Houston, my wife didn't water well and we lost almost half our lawn. This year we were plagued with fire ants. Early Spring I applied compost tea (home made,) dry molasses, Medina Growin Green and nematodes (I had also installed an irrigation system last Fall.) The problem is the ants started heading into the home so I resorted to "Suspend SC" for perimeter treatment which stopped the ants dead in their tracks. We still have several mounds, though I believe we've eradicated a large number in the yard with the organic treatment. It makes total sense to me to nurture the soil but in my case it has taken more than a few months of organics and I'm still working on the ant problem (we have lots of frogs, lizards and wasps.)
Jon