Organic Control Methods for Sawflies

From the creepy crowly studios of W DIY FM and Bethlehem PA , it is time for another What's that thing episode of chemical free horticultural hijinks you bet, your garden . Have you had problems with caterpillars that weren't bothered by BT ? I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and on today's show, I'll tell you how to identify the look alike saw fly and how to handle that nasty little flant muncher. Otherwise, it's a fabulous phone call Show Capti Gittens. Yes, we will take your telecommunic ated questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions and hauntingly hot hab and yeroes . So keep your ears right here because it's all coming up faster than you say ing bye bye soft live right after this . W DIY presents a selection of award winning podcasts that air weeknights from six to seven PM . Listen to important conversations regarding art, science, business, health, and more here in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Check our website for new topics and archived programs. WDIY podcasts are on eighty eight point one FM, streaming at WDIY. Org , on the app or wherever you get your podcasts. From the well manicured studios of W DIY FM and Bethlehem PA , it is time for another Turf War hour of chemical free horticultural hijinks. You bet you're garden. I'm your host, Mike McGr ath, and in this week's In The News , we present a story by Becky Little , a freelance writer based in Washington , DC And I quote When spring rolls around in the northern hemisphere , so do convers ations about no mow may . The idea is for homeowners to forgo mowing , allowing otherwise hidden flowers to bloom in your lawn , increasing your yard's biodiversity and providing food for pollinators like native bees . However , scientists have increasingly questioned whether this trend which, began in the UK is comparable with U. S. laws Mo May started in twenty eighteen as a campaign by the UK organization plant life . The group originally coined the slogan to encourage local UK councils to manage green spaces more like traditional hay meadows to increase biodiversity , according to Sarl Shuttleworth, a botanical adviser for plant life . In the UK, she says people's lawns are often kind of relic grasslands, and letting them grow can reveal native flowers they didn't know they had in their lawn . Those flowers provide nectar and pollen for native bees and other local pollinators that evolved alongside these plants . No Mo May caught on in the United States around twenty twenty when the city of Appleton, Wisconsin started encouraging residents to participate . Soon , more than thirty US cities had adopted no M initiatives , and many individual households have become interested in practicing it . But at the same time , scientists begin to question whether this was the right strategy for U. S. laws. The United States has more varied climates compared to the UK , meaning that flowers bloom at very different times across the country. In addition, the country's history of coloniz ation means that a lot of the plants in U. S. lawns , including the grasses themselves are non native species . These non native plants don't necessarily provide good support for native pollinators . In twenty twenty four , Appleton announced that it was dropping no , mo in favor of slow mow summer . The city now encourages residents to raise their lawnmower's blades to four inches and wait to mow until the grass reaches six inches . Slower, less frequent mowing does have scientific support . In twenty eighteen , the journal Biological Conservation published a study in which researchers mowed Massachusetts lawns at different intervals between May and September . They were surprised to find that lawns mowed every two weeks yield ed more pollinators than lawns mode every week or every three weeks . The theory is that this is because two weeks was long enough for flowers to sprout , but at three weeks , the grass length made it harder for pollinators to get to any flowers . The scientific consensus is to advise U. S. home owners to choose slow mowing and it can be their gateway into thinking about other ways of managing their lawn . As I have mentioned on the show many times, there is a long tradition of planting early blooming spring bulbs deliberately into lawns in Europe . The tiny bulbs are up and flowering long before the lawn starts to grow and are then dispatched by the first mowing , and they still return year after year Spread the word about your business or organization to a well informed audience. Become an underwriter with WDIY. Our lineup of NPR news and locally produced programs reaches thousands of engaged listeners in the Lehigh Valley and beyond. Underwriting on WDIY is an affordable and effective way to provide information about your product and services to people who care. To learn more about underwriting opportunities opportunities six one zero six nine four eight one hundred or wdiy dot org Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden From the NPR studios of WDIY FM in Bethlehem PA , I am your host Mike McGrath coming up later in the show , I came upon the best insect story identifying and figuring out what it is because it turned up once in my garden and I had no idea and neither would anybody else unless they know what they were looking at . We will teach you about the mysterious saw fly , which is not a fly and it's not a caterpillar , even though it looks like one , it's weird and I'll tell you all about it after a couple more of your fabulous phone calls Mac , welcome to You Better Garden . Thank you, sir. Well, thank you, Mac. Glad to talk to you. How are you doing I'm good sir and yourself . I'm just ducky . Thanks for asking . Especially we finally got out of our drought last week. We had pounding, pounding rain . So if I had a real ducky, he'd be real happy. Where are you, Mac? Metris, Tennessee. All right , what a pleasure. What can we do you for? My tomatoes and my fruit trees, the tomatoes before it begin to ripe start ing dark at the bottom . Right. And then it just gets darker. on And the fruit trees, the same thing. It starts turning dark and then it turns to fungus. What kind of fruit trees? It's a pear tree , peach tree and a plum tree. Okay, the peach tree is notorious for attracting diseases . It's very difficult to grow peach trees organically or conventionally , but pear trees are supposed to be the least problematic, the least affected by disease . Are they equally affected? Yes. Huh ? It'll dry it dry up and then like I said, it just turned to a fungus and it rots . Okay . What was the third tree ? The first street was a peach street, the second was a pe ar and the third was the plum . Plum . Okay . Okay, let's deal with the tomatoes first . How do you grow your tomatoes? How do you support them? I grow them sometim e in a pot, but most of the time just in the soil . And just in natural soil, I don't put any compost or anything around it, just a natural soil soil with triple thirteen fertilizer. Oh, that's it. Ding ding ding . That's death to that . Yeah , people are attracted to ten, ten, ten and but they love the equality of the numbers . The problem is there's no plant in the world that wants equal numbers of each of those nutrients generally and especially for growing tomato , you don't need a high first number , which is nitrogen . You could use a big second , potassium . And then the third number like all around just plant nutrient. It doesn't have any specialties , but nitrogen, phosphorus , and potash , you'd be looking for like a three six four or something in that ratio. Nitrogen , it's very easy to over nitrogen a plant , but the phosphorus makes the plant stronger , improves flowering and fertility and the potash just is just good for the plant in general . So obviously you're not an organic gardener . So I would urge you to look around at local garden centers, not a farm store , not a big box store , and tell them you want a good fertilizer for fruiting plants and they'll help you pick out the right one . Now, how big a plant are you trying to grow in a pot ? It depends on the plant. Sometime they grow taller and then sometimes they don't . But most of the time they grow parel size of the tomatoes plant size , which is about three feet, three and a half feet . Okay , I think you're stunting the growth of your tomatoes in the pots . Okay . If you're going to continue in the pots and there's no reason not to , you would stick to what are called dwarf varieties . It'll say so on the seed packet or the plant tag . These are varieties that are bred to stay mostly upright , top out at two to three feet naturally but produce really nice good sized tomatoes . You know, your big heirlooms and stuff they need to be in the ground . Now do you have your tomato I guess you have your tomatoes in No, no, no, it's the weather hadn't been favorable yet so excellent Yeah , excellent. Now you know not to plant tomatoes in the same spot year after year . Yes, sir. Okay . So as you rotate them, what I want you to do is dig a deeper hole than you're used to digging and pull off the bottom leaves of the plant . Tomato plants don't need those leaves , but every part of the root you bury underground will grow auxiliary roots that will make the plant much healthier . And then I generally agree with don't put anything special in the planting hole , but in your case this is a sign of calcium deficiency okay the rotting out of the bottom of the tomatoes very common so you know what I do is I save up my eggshells during the year and I put the crush shells of a dozen eggs into each planting hole . But you can again at a good garden center that sells organic products , you could buy a fertilizer that also has calcium . You may find that fruiting the fruiting fertilizers also have calcium . Matter of fact, there are some organic manufacturers that specifically make a tomato blend that has calcium in it . Okay , but you want to get that calcium down in the hole where the roots can get at it . Then you fill back the hole with the soil you dug up and I guess I'm not going to get you to like spread compost around the plants or anything, am I? I doubt it . Okay , so instead of the chemical fertilizer you're using , now get that bag of tomato fertilizer, natural tomato fertilizer and rough it into the soil around your plants. Not touching them going out about six inches . And then cover that with more soil. No matter what type it is , granulated fertilizers need to be covered with soil or compost to become active Okay , you're going to be shocked at the blossom endrot you won't get. Now how are we caring for these fruit trees? Are we doing anything to them ? No. We haven't done anything and I don't know if they've bloomed already , and I don't know if it's too late to put something in the ground or spray them with something. I don't know. So you don't feed them generally . No . Okay , that's good. How many trees do you have? Just one each. One each. Well , no, there's two plums and two plums and two pears, but the peach tree I had to take the other three down because we had a storm a few years back and it damaged the trees so I had to remove them, but it's only one tree left . God peach trees are notoriously short lived . If you get twelve to fifteen years out of a peach tree, you're lucky. Okay , so what I want you to do, starting with the peach , I want you to get a pair of pruners and prune away a good third of the branches . Any branches that are interfering with airflow to the center of the plant , any branches that look damaged , but they need a good pruning. And then when the fruit appears, peaches must be thinned when you got fruit out there that' s the size say a marble . You want to remove one third to one half of those marbles and that gives the other peaches room to grow and prevents them getting crowded and picking up fungal diseases . Okay . The pear tree just give a light pruning to rid of any cross branches or branches that showed signs of disease . Same with the plum and as the season progresses , if you see a bad piece of fruit , get it out of there . Okay , and throw it in the trash so that it doesn't spread . When you're ready to come around to real organic gardening , get yourself some real high quality compost and spread it around those trees because they eventually need to be fed and compost is the best gentle natural fe eding. But again, you'll find natural fertilizers that are labeled for use on fruit trees . So use those lightly and remember to cover them with dirt. , you thank so much. You should do better . All right, I appreciate you. Thank you, sir. Our pleasure, Mac, thank you . Well, it's time for me to take a little break and remind everybody out there that next week will be our final NPR show . But you bet your garden will contin ue with new episodes every week . So send your questions and comments to Y at P T D . net write that down fast or at least be prepared to write it down when I repeat it later. I'm Mike McGrath and you're listening to You Better Garden from the NPR studios of W DIY M in Bethlehem P. H. Do you have vinyl albums, forty five's, or CDs on your shelves that are taking up space and gathering dust? Why not donate them for a good cause? WDIY will receive profits from the donation and you can claim a tax deduction. For more information or to arrange for a drop off or pickup, call six ten six nine four eight one hundred or visit wdiy dot org Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden from the NPR studi os of WDIY FM in Bethlehem PA , I am your host Mike McGrath . A little later in the show we will, teach you about the mysterious saw fly . It's weird and I'll tell you all about it after a couple more of your fabulous phone calls . Hilary, welcome to You Bet Your Garden. Hi, thanks so much, Mike. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to have you here, Hilary. How you doing ? I'm doing well. And where is Hillary doing well In Fort Collins, Colorado. Oh , okay. I've spent a lot of time in Colorado. It's all different. It's all different and it's all beautiful . Absolutely. Okay, and what can we do for Hillary in Colorado? I've got a question about rabbit poop. I planted a cover crop in my garden last fall and the rabbits ended up loving it so much, munched on it all winter long , and I've noticed that they've left behind quite a bit of dropping. And I'm wondering if it's safe to leave them in the garden or if I should try and rake out those tiny pellets . Don't forget any cover crops you grow are going to attract deer and rabbits and yep, mice and ground hogs and all of the other wonderful Disney characters that are fun when they're animated, but not so much when they're in your garden. Exactly . So when you first said rabbit poop, I thought you had rabbits . Oh, no . You know, 'cause we need their eggs for Easter, you know? Yeah , you got that The good news , sorry about your cover crops, what cover crops were you using by the way? I plant a winter rye. Right. And about late August and then it grows in the fall and it kind of dies back a little bit and it comes back in the spring. So it gives me a lot of nitrogen and organic matter when I mix it in the spring and it dies back . And I've done it now for about five, six years, and this is the first year that I've really noticed a rabbit infiltration . So I'm not sure if there's just less foxes in my neighborhood now or hawks that are taking care of the problem , but it just seems to be a little a lot more rabbit poop than I've ever seen out there. Yeah, I'm kind of surprised. I thought you were gonna name a truly green manure because as you know, rye is a little rough on the mouth parts . Right. Yeah. I want to eat it . So you know , well and did they take care of k illing it for the season for you? You know, it did look less grown than it usually has at this time of the year, but it's made a little bit of a comeback. So I feel like it's still going to be effective , not as much as usual, but they definitely took it down pretty good . Because as I mentioned recently , Rye is one of those cover crops that behaves very differently different locales and based on the exact type of rye . But had your rabbits not killed your rye , how would you have handled planting around it? I till it in like right around now and then I don't plant into those rows. I use them for my summer crops. So I won't be planting into those rows until about first of June , late May . So it just breaks down , you know, from now until then. And then I plant directly into that row. Do you do anything to get rid of the seed heads on the rye You know, it doesn't get big enough to go to seed. Yeah. You kind of have a short season where you are. Yep . One of the times I was in Colorado, we were staying with a couple on their farm near Cortez and the young woman who was gallantly growing tomatoes told me that the previous year they had snow in June . Yep, that's not uncommon here, that's for sure . And I know you always say to wait till those nights are up in the fifties until you put those warm weather crops in and that takes definitely the first week of June for us. I also think that some parts of Colorado , depending on where you are , are a little bit more like Southeast Alaska England , where you might need some sort of small greenhouse apparatus actually grow tomatoes and peppers and yeah make sure you get some ripe ones . Luckily I'm on the front range so I don't have to worry about that too much. We still have a short season but not, as short as those folks that live in the mountains. Yes, exactly. I think we were five thousand feet up just on the ranch . Yeah, yep, that's quite the elevation here . Yeah, but it's oh people talk about people talk about the night sky, but you can't even come close until you walk out and see it. Yeah, I agree. It's gorgeous. All right, let's get to down to poop here . Rabbit poop is one of the best natural fertilizers you can possibly have . Rabbits are herbivores, so there's no problems with any kind of disease organisms being involved as there is with animals that you know, eat, . Yeah , that's what I was most worried about. No . No, I mean , you know, your poop is full of rye . Yeah . That's fair. It's almost like you've been raising them . Yeah, exactly . The fertilizer contents, so to speak, are very balanced . It is a great bal anced fertilizer . It's not heavy in nitrogen like horse or poultry manure . And it's slow release as you know. I mean it comes palletized for you. Yeah , yep . So it's a good thing then. Yeah. Sounds like do you make compost ? I do. Yep. And I also keep chickens and I compost their poop before I put it into the garden. Okay. So I'm versed in all of that. So that's why I was a little worried about , you know, the rabbit droppings going right into the garden and not being compost ed at first. Nope, but it's better . And it sounds like they didn't eat anything that you wanted to remain. So I would call this fertilizer . All right, that's a win . So yeah, your two choices are to mix it into your compost . Yep , where it will become one with everything else and even enhance your already wonderful compost , I am sure or you can side dress your plants with it and with any kind of pelletized fertilizer, even though this was pelletized by nature . Yeah, we're going to cover it with a little bit of soil . Okay , if you use it your plants and again, especially with your short season , you know, that will help its soil activate. So dig a little trench , drop the pellets in cover them with soil and they will release their fertilizer throughout the growing season . All right, Lisa, maybe I'll have the best garden yet this year. Absolutely. Biggest tomatoes yet. Yeah, just you know, make sure you rig up something to get them some extra extra heat. That's your animation . I mean, even if it's just one mill plastic, you throw over the plants at night and remove it in the morning . Yes, that's a great idea. Yeah, keep warm at night . Awesome. Well, I appreciate the advice. Oh, my pleasure. Great to talk to you. Yeah, thank you so much, Mike. All right, bye bye. Bye. Doug . Welcome to Ubetter Garden . Hi Mike. How are you today? I am just Ducky. Thank you so much for asking Doug. How are you ? I'm fine. It's a cool windy day in Downtown PA . Okay , I'll just play the straight man. What can we do for Doug in Downtingtown? Well, I recently moved to Downownt and I was at a shopping center local. Some of the younger trees that they planted in the parking lot , I looked up and I noticed greenery in the middle of the winter and I realize I think it's mistletoe and I've never seen mistletoe in this part of the country. I've seen it in Texas but I've not seen it in Pennsylvan ia before . Is it something if it shows up in a tree on my property, do you recommend I remove it because I know mistletoe is a parasite even though had status in the past . Well, it is a very unusual plant. There are not a lot true parasites that live the canopy of trees , but mistletoe is perhaps the best known . Now, you're driving me crazy because you know , I've lived in Pennsylvania all my life, but I've been to Texas, I've been to Oklahoma . I've been to places that are the mistletoe capital the US and if you've done any research to make some extra money, people in these regions where there's a lot of mistletoe around , they go out into the woods with shotguns and knock it down out of the tree and then they go sell it . So there's one of your options. When's the last time you saw real missile tape for sale? Well I',m sure Mistletoe does not have the same status it used to have. I mean, bringing it to an office party could probably end you up in a closed door lecture with your human resource officer. Hack just calling for the party would yeah , it is a Christmas associated plant because of course it's green in the winter and it has red berries . So green and red and alive at a time of year when everything else is dead . The mythology, the stories , the theory , the religious aspects, they're all over the place . Now I'm really glad to talk to you because I haven't had a m istletoe call in a decade or more . And then they were from Oklahoma and several of them in a row. One guy wondered if he keeps shooting the mistletoe out of the tree , is he going to ruin his supply? Is he going to get rid of it all accidentally ? The other was how do you people if you're selling them this you know essentially a beautiful Christmas plant that the berries are incredibly toxic and then other people wanted to know what I believe is your quest ion , is this killing my plant ? So now you don't have any in your trees yet . No, sir. I noticed it in a department store or sh aopping mall. Huh ? When you sent the pictures, did you include the base of the tree ? Well, it was a honey locust and it was in an island that was created in a parking lot . I did see a flare. If I didn't do it, I didn't I didn't purposely I just the photo may not have it. Okay , but you said you saw a flare . Yes. Root flare coming out of the ground. Yeah. Now here's the story and there is still much debate this does mistletoe attack weakened plants . In other words, they're easy prey for this parasite , or does the mistletoe drop onto pretty much any tree at once and then saps the strength of the tree . So the consensus that mistletoe will not harm a perfectly healthy tree and it's up to you whether you want to remove it, display it, something like that , but definitely it goes after trees that are already weakened and sometimes already dead . Would you inoculate a tree if you would? I mean, if you had a prize magnolite in your front yard, would you say, let me grow mistletoe on this tree? No , no, no, you're just asking for trouble . Okay , no, if it shows up it shows up , but it is generally and my opinion is one hundred percent it shows up on stressed trees . And come on , what trees suffer worse stress than in those narrow st rips and shopping centers one hundred percent right especially this year when those trees in our Pennsylvania area have gone totally unwatered for five or six weeks and as we are taping this show almost all parts of Pennsylvania have a deficit of like a foot we have zero water . Matter of fact, something I've been looking for a reason to mention on the show is grab the first cranberries you can from Jersey most of the harvest was lost. There was no water to flood the bogs , the berries desiccated from lack of just generic water . So is climate change on a stick . We are making it more and more difficult for quote normal plants to survive , which I know this is n't all popular , but this is one reason I beg people not to go nuts over tearing up live plants to install native plants , because the native plants may have thrived back when we lived in a normal climate , but we appear to be approaching like the end of a bad science fiction novel the plants are so stressed and the mistletoe is definitely a sign of that stress . Now is the shopping center open on Sunday Yes it is. Damn. I was thinking if you had a twelve gauge, you could go make some extra money They should put a sign underneath it, you know, five dollars kisses. Yeah , you know, no, you can't do anything like that in today's society . But it would be cool if you caught somebody under it and pointed up to it and see what their reaction is. They probably do that. They probably pull a gun on you. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you fascinated . Bye bye. Bye bye . Well, it's time for me to take a little break and remind everyone once again that, you bet your garden will move to a new home beginning in June . So please email us your questions, comments , tips , tricks, etc at YBYG for Uber Garden at P TD . Net Our new web address will be Ubetch Your Garden. org and you'll find out lots more info at the You Bet Your Garden Facebook page . Check it every day for exciting updates I'm Mike McGrath and the next thrilling episode of You Better Garden will be our finale here on W DIY and NPR . Be sure to tune in to Laugh Cry and find out where to find our new podcast in June. Plus a new talk with our favorite naturalist Thor Hansen, live music and much more. That's on the next You Bet Your Garden Welcome back to another thrilling episode of You B esh Garden From the Studios of W DIY F M in Bethlehem PA , I am your host Mike McGrath and yes , we are in the stretch now, cats and kittens . I promise you will be fascinated as I explain caterpillar look alike that has nothing to do with caterpillars and despite its name, it's not a fly , it is a weird one and it behooves you to know what it looks like, acts like and how to get rid of it easily . And we'll do that after a couple more of your fabulous phone calls. My name is Rose and I live in the Ozarks here in Missou and a comment is about the wireless deer detractor. We're right in the middle of deer country here and there is a law in Missouri that you cannot put a deer attractant anywhere on your property . It's also my deer. They go you have to go through all sorts of hideous things like tangling corn covered briers , barbed wire fences and you name it. And I don't think that a poke in their nose would make that much difference to them. I don't know. I haven't tried it, but what I use is a animal stopper and essentially it smells like dead meat. So I thought that might help. Love your show. Bye. Well , I can understand the law hunters will often try to lure deer to a specific area where they have a tree stand up . And I believe that is illegal in many states and you know, for good reason. I mean, it's just it's just unfair. You're not really hunting. You're like shooting metal ducks at a carnival or something . What you're referring to is called the wireless deer fence . And again you look it up online, wireless deer fence . You get three stakes with electrodes on the top and scent pellets that you use to attract the deer to the electrodes on the top. They get a mild shock and run away . Now , I have to tell you , I mean you're not piling up a huge amount of corn in a field and then picking them off . So I don't think the law was meant for this , but I think it's worth while the animal repellent you mention is probably made from rotten eggs essentially . And it is very effective at keeping deer other herbivores away , but as you know, you have to reapply it after rains. It loses its effectiveness . So my solution is the motion activated sprinkler . I mean you have a long season there. You could have this thing hooked up for all the growing season before you get a freeze . And it's very simple. I mean, you'll find a lot of them online, motion activated sprinkler , it senses it has a motion activator in the head of this device and then you can either have a short stake that puts it in the ground or I went for a big tripod that holds it above everything because it's much more effective . And when the motion detect or detects something as big as a deer for God's sake , it shoots a couple of cups of cold water at them and they run away . I use both I have a motion activated sprinkler to protect my garden , but I have host s, beds of hostas all throughout the rest of my property and the last two years the deer have eaten them before they can flower . So this year I went ballistic , took all of the wireless deer fence steaks I had, which was a dozen , made sure they were fresh b atteries in them , made sure they had fresh attractor pellets and surrounded the hostess, which is deer's favorite food with them. And so far I shouldn't be saying this, should I? I should I should wait until the flowers are done . But so far the stalks of the host age are untouched and I see the purple flowers beginning to emerge . So you're welcome to keep using your repellent . There's no law against using the motion activated sprinkler. , good luck to you . All right, as promised, it is time for the Question of the Week , which we are calling saw flies , a truly weird garden pest . I was looking around for an unusual topic we hadn't covered for a while and I found one that also solves a mystery many of you may be confronted with this season . So from a couple of years back we represent I learned about what might be the strangest garden pest of all time Nancy in Forks Township PA called into the show and left a message on our answering machine about soft flies on her hibiscus plants . So flies , possibly the strangest insect pest out there are a topic that doesn't come up often and we haven't discussed them in quite a while . Although they look exactly like extremely creepy caterpillars sawfly larvae do not become maws or butterflies , nor do they turn into any kind of actual fly , as their name suggests. I now quote from the Missouri Botanical Gardens Excellent website . Soft flies are in the same order as ants , wasps , and bees Their name derives from the adult female's abdominal appendage , which she uses to insert eggs in foilage . Adult saw flies have two p air of wings and are dark, wasp like , somewhat flattened insects , usually a half inch long or shorter . Most of the surface feeding larvae , the caterpillar lookalikes , have six or more pairs of pro legs on the abdomen and one large quote eye on each side of the head An exception is the pear saw fly whose larvae resemble a small dark olive green slug . McGrath here , it is difficult to adequately describe the caterpillar like larvae, many of which are yellow with black dots , look like refugees from a horror movie, and tend to appear in lar ge clusters , which makes them even creepier . But despite their uncanny resemblance , they are not caterpillars of any kind . And so the ancient trusted organic caterpillar killer , Bacillus Therngensis AKA the old original BT no effect on them and no shame on those who have tried. It's the first thing I would have done . And there isn't just one kind of saw fly . Quote, the brist rose slug is as the name implies , a slug like sawfly larvae , one of several types that feed on roses. It is shiny black to pale green. When it reaches maturity , it develops bristle like hairs on its body which its name , bristle , is derived . Young larvae skeletonize the lower leaf surfaces of their favorite host while mature larvae chew large holes in the leaves. The good news is that soft flies generally don't do much damage and ignoring them is one option . And as those of you who have listened to this show for years realize ignoring things going wrong in the garden favorite option . I just wait for the predators to get to work . Furthermore, the Botanic Garden site continues . A number of natural enemies keep most sawfly populations low , including parasitic mini wasps , birds , small mammals , and predaceous beetles as well as fungal and viral diseases . McGrath here again . Organic gardeners should always remember that what's a pest to you is a big delicious bag of protein to a predator , especially in this case birds . Side note , when a single nest of tent caterpillars appeared in my crab apple tree one spring , I told my assistant, the awesome Ninja Shawn to just poke at it with the longest handled hoe we had and make a tear in it. And then what he asked, that's it, I told him, We're done. The birds will take it from here . And the next day there was not a single caterpillar left. Birds are a gardener's best friend , but to get them to work for you , you must not feed them bird seed . They'll fill up on the seed and leave your pests alone . And you have to realize that bird feeders are not good for the birds either for many reasons , including es andpecially the spreading of disease due to the unnatural crowding that feeders cause . Feeders are a hundred percent for human amusement only . The birds do not need them . They have been existing on pests like soft flies since soft flies were there for them to eat and they will contin ue to do so if you stop filling them up with junk food . If you really want to lean into attracting flying friends to your garden , have lots of birds bath around your plants. Birds don't need human supplied food in the summer , but fresh water can be scarce at times , especially now the droughts are becoming much more common . Give the birds lots of fresh water to drink and bathe in and they'll return the favor by eating your pest insects. It's in their DNA, it's what they do . Don't believe me . The Missouri Botanic Garden notes that a few saw fly larvae on a large or mature plant may do little damage and can be tolerated . And when larvae become half grown or larger , they actually eat less . Leaving those larvae alone for birds to manage naturally could be a good and beneficial solution . Soft flies feeding mid to late summer even do less harm Other simple solutions include hand picking the little monsters. They don't sting like some venomous caterpillars and the classic spraying them off your plants with laser sharp streams of water , which I have come to realize is the single most misquoted and misunderstood of my organic suggestions . We're talking about sharp streams of water , not gentle sprays , not mists . You need an adjustable nozzle that has a layer sharp setting . If you don't see the pesco flying off the plant when you spray it, the spray is not sharp enough . If you have lousy water pressure, you can buy an inexpensive nozzle attachment that funnels even a weak flow through a smaller diameter tube to create a powerful force. You can also just prune off any affected plant parts , trash them , and go home early unless you have chickens , and then you should feed them to the chickens . And finally , if spray something you must . Oh yeah, I know who you are . You can smother them with professionally made insecticidal soap or a horticult ural oil designed for use in the summer , not dormant oil . That's only for use on fruit trees over the winter Well, that sure was some good information identifying and eliminating the ser iously weird soft fly. Now, whatnet? Luckily you can read that article over at your leisure or your leisure. Just click the link for the question of the week at the UBet Your Garden Facebook page or go directly to our new website Ubet Your Garden O rg . Yikes , my producer is threatening to saw my flies if I don't get out of this studio, we must be out of time . But you can and should send us your email . You're tired, you're poor, your wretched refuge teaming towards our garden shore at our new email address Y G at P T Please please please include your location . You'll find all of this contact information , plus answers to your garden questions , audio of this show, audio of recent shows, links to our internationally renowned podcasts and important information about our next menu . It's all of the U Bet G Yardouren Facebook page . You bet your Garden is an hour long public radio show podcast , produced and delivered to you weekly by NPR station WDIY in B ethlehem PA . You bet your garden was created by Mike McGrath . Mike McGrath was created when he sat too close to an early television set that showered him with cosmic graves while he was watching the three stooges on Popeye Theater with Sally Star . Our musical director is Ken Guider, our social media director is Amanda Norfleet . Our peerless prince of profound production James Zipper . Margaret McConnell is the executive director of W DIY F M . Our executive producer is the always lovely Jonas Bowen, and our incredible assistant is the awesome Ninja Sean . I'm your host Mike McGrath and we are about to enter a miserable hot and muggy early heat wave . So I'll just keep my lettuce watered and in as much sh ade as I can provide until I see you again right here next week