Killing Flying Insects--the Natural Way

It was my six year old who noticed the canteloupe sized wasp nest under the patio cover. We paid a man with a respirator mask and goggles $70 to soak the nest in a pesticide that foamed and dripped menacingly over our walkway to the garage. He was paid to knock the nest down but said that he would knock it down "if he was in the area" in four or five days. Nice. He proclaimed the wasps were actually hornets.

Now we have discovered more wasp/hornet/jellow jacket thingies flying into a hole over our door to the garage. Every time we open the door we risk letting in some of the flying hazards. So now to find out where to buy an organic thingie killer.

First searches turned up the EcoSmart Wasp and Hornet Killer, which is not available in Canada. I found this out through calling EcoSmart headquarters. Darn. It contains things like mint oils in some type of combination that is deadly to little critters but not kids and pets. Canadian Tire sells the Green Earth Homecare Flying and Crawling Insect Killer, a brand originating in Canada. It is a "botanical insecticide", but I had difficulty finding out exactly what is in it since it was not listed on the product's listing:

http://www.canadiantire.ca/browse/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524443309414&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=282574489838394&bmUID=1246394677712

Here is Green Earth's website: http://www.greenearth.ca/ Sure Gro is the parent company, located in Eastern Canada. They list telephone help at 1-800-268-2806. There is no "Flying and Crawling" insect killer in their current product list. Puzzling. So, has it been phased out of their product line? The Bio-Mist Insect Killer, available in concentrate and non-concentrate forms, lists pyrethrin as its main ingredient. Pyrethrins are derived from Chrysanthemum. A description of pyrethrin is listed here: http://www.greenearth.ca/features/pyrethrins_e.php

"Pyrethrins are powerful contact insecticide causing a rapid paralysis or "knockdown" of the treated insects. This insecticide also has stomach-poison and fumigant action. Pyrethrins are fast acting and effective on a wide range of insects; damage from insects usually stops within minutes of application. Pyrethrins have an acute oral LD50 of 200 mg/kg. Formulated products have low mammalian toxicity. They are not persistent but break down rapidly in sunlight - so there are no residue problems. This permits use on edible crops up to the day before harvest."

These insecticides are usually designed for spraying directly on or into nests. The entrance into our home and the nest is extremely difficult to access as it is located behind the header of the door frame.

Here's a web resource enumerating other alternatives to mainstream pesticides:

http://www.pesticidefreebc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=64&Itemid=120

Update. I bought the Green Earth Flying & Crawling Insect Killer from Canadian Tire for $7, I think it was. That night we removed the packing tape that has been covering the crack on the inside of our house which is a passage to the wasp nest. As my husband went downstairs looking for something, I went downstairs as well to look for a ladder. I heard my visiting brother screaming and running around. I ran upstairs. He was being attacked by a wasp. It flew directly at him for a focussed attack. We take out the trusty dustbuster and vacuum it up. I went up calmly to close the tape, and then another one escaped. I didn't see where it flew. Next thing I knew, I felt pain on my scalp as I was stung on the top of my head, where my hair is parted from a hair clip. I started using my hands to frantically brush out my hair. Now my husband is up, and he and my brother look for the wasp, and they find the still alive wasp on the ground. They squish it.

We re-tape the crack and give up for the night. We also tested the Insect Killer and found that when we attached a straw to it, the killer just dripped out the end of the straw.

Later that night, I take the live wasp out of the dustbuster and put it in a clear plastic bag. I spray the Insect Killer inside. The wasp goes into convulsions but does not die... for a long time.

Next day we called the exterminator. $45 to have him pump our house full of foam and pesticide powder. So much for being green. Over the next few days, my scalp felt positively inflated, and the tension in my scalp was just amazing. I probably looked like Gumby. Die, wasps, die.

Building the Square Foot Garden

Around 10:15 am, my long awaited Scenery Solutions Frame-it-all 8x8x12 Raised Bed Garden Kit from Costco finally arrived. It came in four 4 foot long boxes. The hardest part of this job is screwing the joints to the planks and levelling the ground. The handy video I watched at the Scenery Solutions website made it seem so easy.

http://www.frameitall.com/raised-bed-gardens.html

Well now, I take a look at the video again. Ha. They start the video with the joint pre-screwed onto the planks! Cheaters! Liars! For the life of me, I can't figure out why they didn't pre-drill the holes in the planks. Some of my planks are misaligned by 1-2 mm. I hope I don't see a lot of dirt creeping through the imperfections.

Tiny paper labels on the planks state that the material contains "less than 1% formaldehyde." Eeek. Didn't even know it had any formaldehyde at all. Maybe I should let it off gas a bit before I fill it with soil. These babies were backordered, which explains the big wait for the kit, so they would likely be fresh off the factory presses.

The planks are darker than I expected, and clearly look plastic, despite the faux wood texturing. They are difficult to drill through. I tried handscrewing to start the drilling before switching to my power drill, but eventually found that I needed to stand over the joint, laying it on the ground, and use brute force downward into the screw to make the drilling faster.

I laid the first 5.5 inch layer of planks on the ground to see whether I need to level the ground. It looks not too bad, but I was just sort of hoping that the ground would be level and I wouldn't have to do anything, because I didn't get any tools to help me with levelling.

Oh my... I have just received delivery of my soil/vermiculite/peat moss order and the vermiculite is... fine grade. I cringed as I sent the fine vermiculite bags back, knowing that this means another delay in getting my garden ready. The garden centre will be speaking to their supplier on Monday to special order the coarse or medium grade vermiculite for me. Or at least that's what they said.

So back to sourcing vermiculite again. Endless Google searches, and now finally I turn to Metacrawler. Still nothing. Looking at a website about Samaurai Gerberas leads me to a recipe mix including coarse vermiculite. I call to ask where they get their coarse vermiculite. The kind lady points me to Sumas Grow Media in Chilliwack and West Creek Farms in Langley. I call Langley and their office is already closed at 4:30 pm on Friday.

Monday now. Coarse vermiculite is not available here, as far as I can tell. West Creek Farms has only medium and fine grade. David Hunter has advised that they only have medium and fine. I am going with the medium, at $30 a bag. West Creek Farms sells the medium for $20 a bag but they are located in Fort Langley and I am not prepared to drive to save $40 for 4 bags, or to pick them up in Burnaby. David Hunter will receive my special order on Friday and will deliver them after. Sigh. Another week to wait before I can put in the soil.

Square Foot Gardening: Vermiculite Sourcing

I'm waiting to get my raised bed kit from Costco. I ordered it on May 2, and it is due to arrive on June 26. Not quite the 7-10 days I was originally promised by Costco... I missed most of the early growing season!

Read about Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening (SFG) method. More garden for less work. Anything requiring less work sounds great to me! Mel advocates a mix of 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 coarse vermiculite. Well, easier said than done... The peat moss is easy enough to find, as is the 5 different kinds of compost. The problem is the holticultural grade vermiculite.

Many discussion groups interested in vermiculite seemed to be marijuana hydroponic growers! They recommend buying vermiculite by mail order through Worm's Way, http://www.wormsway.com/detail.asp?sku=VER944. It's a very reasonable $25 US there for 4 cubic feet. It's reputedly easier to get vermiculite in Canada.

Through the Square Foot Gardening group at Facebook I discovered that Sun Gro makes vermiculite. Sunshine Strong-Lite Horticultural Coarse Vermiculite. The Sun Gro website directed me to a few locations near me: Prickly Pear in Richmond was one. They sell 8L bags for $3.99. Home Depot sells a vermiculite (but not coarse), 9L for $6.99.

So I did my calculations. I will be building an 4x12 box with a 12 inch depth. That requires 48 cubic feet of Mel's Mix. One third of that would be 16 cubic feet, or 453L. Hmmm... that means I'll need to buy 56.6 bags of 8L vermiculite for a total of $226.50 plus tax. So, I put in a telephone call to Sun Gro headquarters in Bellevue, WA. They referred me to Customer Service at 1-888-797-7328 who referred me to local Sun Gro representative for BC, Fred Wickens. He was very kind and helpful. He noted that vermiculite used to be mixed into their potting soils but that is no longer done, and that it is not cost effective to ship vermiculite from the East Coast to sell here. The vermiculite available locally is shipped from South Africa. So much for buying local...

He referred me to Eddi's Wholesale Garden Supplies in Surrey, BC. They sell 110L bags but they would not sell to me as I am not a retailer. So back to the local garden centres. Mr. Wickens had mentioned Gardenworks, which sells the 110L bags for $40. Jackpot! 110L? Now we're talking! Unfortunately, they sold out over the weekend. Hearing that got me into a frantic state of mind, so I tried to order my things over the phone for delivery to get my claws on the next shipment. Well, the vermiculite they were expecting that day showed up, but only two bags. I need four. Also, it was medium grade. I find it strange that the supplier would only ship two bags. I would have to wait until perhaps Thursday for the last two bags I needed.

So I was back to calling around for vermiculite sources. Art's Nursery only has the 10L Dutch Treat bags for $5, despite being "one of Greater Vancouver's largest retail and wholesale garden centres." I did discover, however, that they offer Sea Soil for $65 a "tractor scoop", which is "60-70% of 1 yard." After some calculations, I figured out that I need one tractor scoop. The problem is that delivery would cost $100. If I was willing to truck in the soil myself, this was definitely the place to go for Sea Soil. http://www.artsnursery.com/bulk.asp

For Sea Soil, another option would be to have "Got Dirt Ltd." deliver the dirt to me directly. They did not have peat moss or vermiculite, and I would still have to pay the high delivery charge (less than $100 but more than $50, can't remember). I would rather get the one stop shopping thing done to save on delivery charges. I just couldn't picture myself lugging bag after bag of soil from the store to my car, and from my car to the house.

Ward Teulon of City Farmer also offered to supply me the soil, for $385 plus taxes, which includes laying down newspapers and putting the Sea Soil in the box and amending it with organic fertilizers. Alas, it would not be Mel's Mix. He suggested 25 bags of Sea Soil, which was far less than I calculated for total volume required for the bed.

By searching online, I found a supplier in Vernon, BC, Briteland Distributors, who had the 110L bags along with an interesting assortment of supplies ranging from organic gardening supplies to janitorial and food service indudstries, among others. Shipping costs to Vancouver would be prohibitive, as the supplier would have to find a freight company to ship. Well, if you live near Vernon, this might be a great place to buy your supplies. They even have bat guano!http://www.briteland.com/wecs.php?usetemplate=formatted_organics

David Hunter Garden Centre was mentioned on the Sun Gro site, so I tried there. Bingo. The 110L bags are in stock in the Surrey store, for only $27! Yeah! Other items were also cheaper than GardenWorks, all except Sea Soil. How puzzling.

Here is what I'm buying:

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $27
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3)
8 x 25L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$3
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $8
Landscape cloth, $5 for 3x25 feet.
Delivery $25

TOTAL COST: $275 plus tax.

The large bags of vermiculite will be sent up from the Surrey store since the Arbutus store has none.

For comparison, a similar purchase at GardenWorks (Mandeville):

4 x 110L medium grade vermiculite @ $40
2 x 3.8ft3 peat moss (which expands to 16 ft3) @ $17
7 x 30L mushroom manure (horse poo) @$5.50
13 x 32L organic sea soil @ $7
Landscape cloth, $13 for 3x50 feet.
Delivery $70

TOTAL: $409.50 (but 25 feet more landscape cloth and 10L more mushroom manure) plus tax.


Miles at the Arbutus store of David Hunter spent lots of time laughing at me on the telephone when I asked him for his opinion on what composts to buy. He ended up critiquing the whole venture. He had heard of SFG, but thought I would be better off simply digging up the soil in the ground and filling it with mostly mushroom manure, as my mix was not cost effective. When I said that the SFG was supposedly foolproof, he said it was more simply "foolish." Ha ha. True that spending $275 for everything delivered (plus taxes) is fairly exorbitant for a vegetable garden. It would take me forever to recoup the costs if this was a commercial venture. He didn't understand the need for vermiculite at all. So while I am worried, I am going to go on blind faith that the guru of SFG knows what he's doing. I appreciate that Miles had good intentions, and I am appreciative. Heck, I've spent more than $275 on tickets to Beauty and the Beast for the whole family, so I'm not terribly worried. He also suggested I scrap the worm castings as being too expensive ($23 for 20L). This was the piece of advice I did listen to. I was just trying to follow the requirement of five different kinds of compost that Mel prescribes.

I wish my own compost was ready. I've been composting since 1997, but the oldest compost in my new home is about 3 years old and only a small amount seems to be ready. I already used it when I planted some mini pumpkins in the existing garden bed.

Miles also suggested that I use a rototiller to mix everything together. When I mentioned the SFG idea of putting the soils on a tarp and mixing by lifting up the corners, he laughed again. He suggested physiotherapy might be in order after I'm done!

I hope it doesn't matter much that I have medium, and not coarse vermiculite. A quick look at others asking the same question on other gardening forums shows that medium vermiculite is okay, but will break down sooner.

Delivery of the soil is now timed for delivery of the garden bed kit. Dreading the back breaking work of putting it all together.

Update:  March 22, 2012.  I called David Hunter to ask about vermiculite.  I am concerned that the medium vermiculite has now broken into smaller pieces.  It is now $35 for 110L of the coarse vermiculite.  They now have a Broadway location again, at 2560 West Broadway between Larch and Trafalgar.

Update March 13, 2013.  David Hunter (604-733-1534) has medium vermiculite, 100L for $50!!!  Wow, in the course of four years, the price has doubled.