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Test completed 7-08-08
This year the plants are all hosted in an enclosure 9' tall measuring 20' wide by 30' long and topped with bird netting. Beyond insects that fly, no other flying creatures are getting into there this year. A wonderful side benefit, the 9' blind keeps most of the wind from reaching the plants and toppled plants appear to be a thing of the past. The below photo was taken 6-8-08, the start date of a direct comparison between insecticidal soap and a systemic insecticide/miticide.
As the photo shows the test area had both slope and tall trees which may affect test results. Split plot helps get around those influences although with what data obtained, analysis via any statistics would be something of a miracle. But the plot did produce data, which I hope others find useful. Overall the chemical treatment [fka ISOTOX] had less mite damage than did the soap treatment.
Insecticidal soap has been the mainstay in my ongoing battle with the sixspotted mites. As these things are endemic in my area, I've got to deal with them or face plants with black tip, funky leaves, bloom clusters which abort, and plants which would otherwise long to be somewhere else, and make it quick. Somehow even picked on, ones do bloom.
Nice pic and maybe the froopy leaves could pass by as just a quirk, but check it closer.
Looks like outer veins have been mined while this was elongating. It just takes one or two mites passing by and feeding at the right time. This plant was on a schedule of being sprayed, no matter what, every four days 30 minutes before sunrise while it is still cool and light enough too. It wasn't enough, although I did keep them from doing much in the way of bloom damage.
Here's a rainbow base which went through an ordeal of another kind this past winter in the greenhouse. Since it had no leaves at the start of the trial period, it had no defenses ready and newly elongating leaves were succumbing to the mites, having black necrotic tissue. Another rainbow of same plant, this one a cutting, started to bloom before leafing out, lost the bloom cluster and then proceeded to lose most leaves until finally grabbing some growth.
Rainbow cutting recovering.
This plant (from tissue culture) is one of those in the miticide treatment. The only damage noted on it is this leaf with marginal deformities and purple spots/discolorations. Those showed up in the soap treatment too.