Friend or foe on my California Wonder?

[flyfiishn]

Nice........ sorry I gotta read replies a little closer.

Any trout in there? I promise to catch n release?

[b54red]

That is definitely a Mayfly and quite harmless. I used to love fly fishing around areas where they were hatching especially early in the hatch. The bream would go crazy feeding on them and I would go crazy feeding on the bream.

Bill

[sjamesNorway]

Originally Posted by heirloomtomaguy

I shoot and ask questions later. It cant ruin your plants if its dead. If its harmless then you killed a bug no biggie.

Gotta differ! If you kill a ladybug or a lacewing, for example, you're killing an ally in your garden. (lacewing = Chrysopidae feed on a variety of soft-bodied insects, but mostly on aphids and mealybugs. Leafhoppers, thrips, lecaniine Coccidae, mites, etc., may also be attacked.)

[heirloomtomaguy]

Originally Posted by sjamesNorway

Gotta differ! If you kill a ladybug or a lacewing, for example, you're killing an ally in your garden. (lacewing = Chrysopidae feed on a variety of soft-bodied insects, but mostly on aphids and mealybugs. Leafhoppers, thrips, lecaniine Coccidae, mites, etc., may also be attacked.)

This year in order to kill thrips and spider mites everything has to die, friendlies included. It stinks but if i want maters its the only way. The point i was trying to make was rather than take a pic of an unknown bug and wait for one of us to identify it, i would kill the 1 bug i found instead of riskimg letting it get away just in case it was a bad bug.

[sjamesNorway]

Originally Posted by heirloomtomaguy

This year in order to kill thrips and spider mites everything has to die, friendlies included. It stinks but if i want maters its the only way. The point i was trying to make was rather than take a pic of an unknown bug and wait for one of us to identify it, i would kill the 1 bug i found instead of riskimg letting it get away just in case it was a bad bug.

That's reasonable.

[b54red]

There are just times when you have to either give up on having a productive garden some seasons or take out some friendlies in order to stop an invasion. I try not to use any more toxic options than are necessary but many times down here there is no other choice. I think it was three years ago that I didn't have to use any pesticides organic or not the whole season because I had a huge influx of Assassin bugs along with plenty of ladybugs and lacewings. That was a wonderful season but it is very rare down here where the pests seem able to overwhelm the beneficial insects most summers. There is one pest down here that gets the full toxic treatment every year now since I first tried it and it worked wonderfully and that is Squash Vine Borers. I dust powdered Sevin on the lower part of the stems and reapply it every time it rains hard enough to wash it off. Before doing this I would lose 75% of my squash plants before they made more than a few squash and now if I keep up with dusting the base of the plants I can have squash til I get sick of them.

Bill