Subject: Re: Chewing tobacco as bugspray ?

From: Ron Opat <[email-masked]>
Date: 20 Mar 1996 21:22:06 GMT

This and other home remedies for plants. Ckeck out any books by Jerry 
Baker Americas Gardener available at libary or book stores.

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From: [email-masked] (Pete Akerson)
Date: 20 Mar 1996 14:26:07 GMT

Hi -
  Last Saturday (Here in Md. USA) I saw a little snippet
of a gardening show on PBS where a guy was using chewing tobacco,
listerine, dish soap, and similar things to make insecticides,
slug killer, and pruning sealer (latex paint & listerine.)

  Did anyone take notes ?  Better yet, anyone know some recipes ?

-- 
If you know what you're doing, you're not making any progress.

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From: [email-masked] (Allyn Weaks)
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 20:55:25 -0800

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Pete

>  Did anyone take notes ?  Better yet, anyone know some recipes ?

Sounds like some of the standard Jerry Baker stupidities.  Yes, you can
extract the nicotine alkaloid from any sort of tobacco into a pesticide. 
It is _extremely_ toxic.  Two cigarettes soaked in a glass of water
overnight can kill an adult.  Kids are a lot more sensitive.  As a
pesticide, nicotine is non-selective, and therefore as hazardous to your
biodiversity as any other non-selective pesticide, and more dangerous to
handle than many, especially if there are kids around.  At least if you
buy an insecticide at the store, it comes with warning labels, and
instructions for relatively safe use.  If one extracts it oneself, one is
quite likely to use any old jar, and not bother to label it or handle with
due respect or dispose of the remains in a safe manner.  (Many years ago
my cousin almost died from a nicotine solution that had been extracted in
an old 7-Up bottle and the little bit left over forgotten about.)  Oh yes,
as an added bonus, tobacco extractions are quite likely to infect your
tomatoes, potatoes, and other plants in that family with tobacco mosaic
virus...

As for pruning sealant, you shouldn't.  Only in cases where known
devastating diseases are present for a particular species should one seal
a pruning cut with anything at all, and not always then.  Painting or
sealing will retard or prevent the growth of the protective tissue.

The rest of JB's 'solutions' are similarly poorly thought out at best, and
dangerous at worst.  He is out to make money (and unfortunately
succeeding) by deluding people that not only are toxins the only possible
solution or preventative to a problem but that common household chemicals
are safer and cheaper than specially bought ones.  Although in some cases
that may be true, in many, many cases it isn't.  The best defense against
such flim-flam (not only from JB, but from politicians and marketing
droids, as well) is to learn at _least_ the basics of chemistry and
biology (say, to a first year college level).

Real recipes?  Buy plants and seed appropriate to your climate and soil;
plant disease and insect resistant varieties; improve your soil with
plenty of compost or other organic matter, and otherwise handle it as the
living thing that it is; don't over-fertilize; use pesticides only as a
last resort and only after the pest has been properly identified (never
use pesticides 'just in case'); rotate vegetable crops properly; leave
some weedy areas to keep the predator bugs happy and living near you;
learn to recognise that the majority of insects and other tiny wildlife
are beneficial (we literally cannot live without them on a global scale);
plant shrubs and trees to attract birds to eat the bugs; don't plant
single-species monocultures.
-- 
Allyn Weaks
[email-masked]
PNW Native Wildlife Gardening:  (under construction)
  http://chemwww.chem.washington.edu/natives/

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From: Dwight Sipler <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 05:51:46 -0500

>   Did anyone take notes ?  Better yet, anyone know some recipes ?

On the other hand, if you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to 
make some bad mistakes. In this case, it would be a mistake to use 
tobacco or anything derived from it on many types of plants. First of 
all, the nicotene is a broad spectrum insecticide (not to mention 
mammalicide) which will get the good bugs with the bad. Second of all, 
Tobacco is frequently a carrier of tobacco mosaic virus (not harmful to 
humans as far as I know, at least not as harmful as the tobacco). This 
virus will infect many plants, particularly tomatoes, peppers and 
potatoes. Most commercial greenhouses that I know don't want smokers in 
the greenhouse because the virus can get on your hands and be transferred 
to plants that way. Keep it out of the garden.

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From: [email-masked](:))
Date: 22 Mar 1996 21:49:39 GMT

In <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Allyn Weaks) writes: 

 leave
>single-species monocultures.

I LOVE your advice!  I have a question for you Allyn, I live on a block
of row garden homes.  Garden home is the same as saying 0 lot line! 
Anyway, if we let native grasses grow here, the neighbors report us to
the authorities for not mowing.  OY!  Anyway, I was thinking of
allowing a portion of my lawn go native.  If I do this, how long will
it take for the grasses to move back in?  Or, should I intentionally
set out some seed of native grasses to encourage it?  Our natives
include small blue stem, large blue stem, blue eye, etc...What would
you do? 

Victoria*

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From: Rick Leuck <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 13:53:53 -0500

if your going after slugs on a broad area your best way to get results is 
use 50# corn oats wheat store bought malithian and a 12-pack of cheep 
beer mix it all together and apply to the areas you want treated.you 
won't see the results you won't see any slugs either

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From: [email-masked] (Allyn Weaks)
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 00:14:01 -0800

In article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked](:)) wrote:

> I live on a block

Well, once you decide to replace lawn with something interesting, turf
grass becomes your worst weed :-)  So I've been trying to completely kill
off my grass and other weeds before planting anything else (or even
deciding what exactly to plant...)  Last fall I put down about ten sheets
of newspaper and covered it with a few inches of wood chips ('cause I can
get them free).  Some grass is still coming up through it, and what I
can't pull I'll use a bit of roundup on after it warms up a bit.  Regular
grass isn't such a problem, but I have some quack grass, and it's pretty
viscious (it sometimes comes up _through_ a wood chip rather than
bothering to go around the chip!).  I'd have used much thicker mulch, but
I didn't want to risk harming my birch tree.  Turning the sod upside down
then mulching also works well, but is _hard_ work.

Since you know you're going to have neighbor problems, you may be better
off doing it as 'borders' that get a bit wider each year until it covers
the whole yard.  If you can put in a fence or hedge it might help (what
they don't notice won't upset them).  Or you could try planting plugs of
native grasses in the existing lawn ,but I don't know how well they'll
compete.  Depending on how well you get along with your neighbors to begin
with, after you've done some research, you might try explaining to them in
advance what you're doing and why, either one at a time, or hold a meeting
and talk it out all at once.

See if you have a native plant society near you.  There are quite likely
people there who have been doing similar things, and can give good
localized advice and help back you up if it comes to a confrontation. 
Also see if your city, county, or state has a backyard wildlife program. 
If you can get your yard registered with every local pregram you can find
out about, (and don't worry about the size--I've heard of New York City
balconies that are registered through the National Federation of Wildlife
program!), it can go a long way towards stopping the neighbors and
authorities who would mow it down.  Usually the height laws are to prevent
negligence, and if you can show detailed records that you are being the
reverse of negligent, and have handy copies of literature references that
lawn is a Bad Thing (tm) it could make all the difference.

The best reference for this sort of thing:

The wild lawn handbook : alternatives to the traditional front lawn
    Daniels, Stevie
    New York, NY : Macmillan USA
    0-02-529445-8 1995 223p. $20.00 Illstr. 30 Refs. In Print

It tells about various things people have tried under different
circumstances, gives some plant lists, and has a section about how to deal
with the neighbors and 'weed' laws.  [The 'weed' laws and covenants that
regulate by height or require turf grasses outright are an altogether
different animal from the noxious weed laws which try to prevent rampant
aliens such as kudzu, loosestrife and other nasties from taking over
natural areas.  The former should be and have been successfully fought in
court, the latter should be paid attention to and perhaps even
strengthened.]

Other related and entertaining refs:

Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony
    Bormann, F. Herbert. Balmori, Diana. Geballe, Gordon. Vernegaard, 
    Lisa (Editor). Geballe, Gordon T.
    Yale University Press
    0-300-06197-8 1993 256p. $11.00 Illstr. In Print

The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession
    Jenkins, Virginia S.
    Smithsonian Institution Press
    1-56098-406-6 1994 272p. $14.95 Illstr. In Print

The Wild Gardener in the Wild Landscape: The Art of Naturalistic 
Landscaping
    Kenfield, Warren G. Hamilton, Happy K. (Illustrator). Egler, Frank 
    E. (Introduction by)
    Connecticut College Arboretum
    1-878899-00-7 1991 232p. $25.95 Illstr. In Print
    Reprint Revised ed., originally 1966

Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards
    Stein, Sara
    Houghton Mifflin Company
    0-395-70940-7 1995 294p. $10.95 Illstr. In Print
    Read My Weeds first to watch her philosophy change from traditional 
    gardener through ecological gardener. This one tells the tale of her
    fight with invasive exotics while trying to reclaim space for native
    meadows and woodlands.

Wild gardening : strategies and procedures using native plantings
    Austin, Richard L.
    New York : Simon & Schuster, c1986.
    1986 96p. Illstr. 

Natural landscaping : designing with native plant communities
    Diekelmann, John; Robert Schuster; illustrations by Renee Graef
    New York : McGraw-Hill, c1982.
    1982 276p. Illstr. 

Natural Garden, The
    Druse, Ken 
    Crown Publishing Group
    0-517-55046-6 1988 p. In Print

Natural Shade Garden, The
    Druse, Ken
    Crown Publishing Group
    0-517-58017-9 1992 288p. $40.00 Illstr. In Print

Natural Habitat Garden, The
    Druse, Ken. Roach, Margaret
    Crown Publishing Group
    0-517-58989-3 1994 p. $40.00 In Print
-- 
Allyn Weaks  [email-masked]
PNW Native Wildlife Gardening:  http://chemwww.chem.washington.edu/natives/
Any advertisements sent to any of my email accounts will be billed $25 per
message, $1 per character, including all header lines.  No exceptions.  Sending
such mail constitutes agreement to these terms.

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From: Bufflehead <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 1996 18:38:17 -0800

Allyn Weaks wrote:

> overnight can kill an adult. 

Presuming, of course, that the adult actually ingests the liquid, right? :)

> due respect or dispose of the remains in a safe manner. 

True enough.  Baker does encourage gardeners to keep all materiel in 
well-marked containers.  And warning labels in and of themselves do nothing 
to guarantee safe use, for the enviro or the user  -- witness the average 
weekend warrior with his can of 2,4d.

I've found the nicotine solution to be only very slightly effective; this 
could be a result of the concentrations used (1 T / Gal) as JB recommends.

> tomatoes, potatoes, and other plants in that family with tobacco mosaic

I've heard some discussion that it's POSSIBLE that TMV _might_ linger in 
processed tobacco and that it _might_ be possible to infect plants in this 
way -- but it seems a bit of a leap to say it's "quite likely."  Do you 
have evidence?  We were always prohibited from smoking in the greenhouses 
to keep films off the foliage (and because smoke is bad for living things 
in general).

> dangerous at worst.  

His solutions tend to be a bit fungible, but I see no problem (and good 
results) with the concept of treating growing things with surfactants to 
reduce surface tension, sugars to promote bacterial growth, enzymes to 
encourage nutrient conversion, etc -- which is basically where he's coming 
from.

>He is out to make money (and unfortunately
> are safer and cheaper than specially bought ones.  

He could make more money by encouraging purchase of preparations carrying 
insane markups than by recommending that you spray your yard with dish 
soap, beer and apple juice, it seems.

>Although in some cases

Of course, but the chance of the average person learning firs-year college 
chem/bio/botany/whatever is nil, and I think you know that.  So people do 
the best they can with the information that they can get, be it from JB, 
Martha, Ortho, Dow Chemical, or whatever.  

If anything, JB encourages _under_fertilization and _under_pesticidation 
(new word?).

> single-species monocultures.

Super advice, and I don't think JB would disagree with a thing you say.