Subject: Re: bacillus thuringenius (Bt)
From: [email-masked] (Tracy Aquilla)
Date: Mon, 27 Jun 1994 17:32:35 GMT
Newsgroups: alt.sustainable.agriculture

In Article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Larry1702)
wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
>(Joseph Cooper) writes:
>
>If you have tomato horn worms that have been infected, one or two in
>a blender will make a super spray of a quart or so used fresh. If
>this is a bit much for you go ahead and keep spending money for what
>you have in abundance. 

Sorry, but this is not legal,from several standpoints. I suppose if it's for
the home garden no one will hassle you, but commercial growers should not be
making up their own BT formulations. In response to the original question,
the main reason that the price of BT formulations is going sky-high is an
increased demand for the products. Now that 'organic farming' has been
defined by the federal government, many growers use BT because it is an
approved organic pesticide, and it works! Furthermore, due in part to this
relatively recent success, the pesticide companies are dumping millions of
dollars into research and development, and they have raised prices
accordingly. Expect to see this trend continue until resistance makes BT
obsolete in a few more years.
                        Tracy Aquilla-UVM