Good morning gardenerds, I'm Christy Wilhelmi
from Gardenerd. And I'm whispering because it's Sunday morning at
dawn, which is the time to apply beneficial nematodes to your garden.
So that's what I'm doing today. I wanted to kind of walk you through the process
in case you want to do some of this for yourself.
Beneficial nematodes do a number of things. In fact, they pretty much solve a
lot of pest problems in your garden. But the trick is you have to apply at a
certain time and you may have to reapply more than
once in order to catch them, to interrupt the life cycle of these
various pests that often pupate in the soil. So I'm going to walk
you through the process. Here's how we do it.
First up, you're going to need some way to apply the nematodes
to soil surfaces and to leaf surfaces. So you can do that one of two ways.
You can use a hose end sprayer like this or a backpack sprayer which is
my favorite thing in the world, because it's, you know,
it's like the gardening equivalent to power tools. Awesome.
You're going to need a water filter. This is a hose...an inline water filter.
Or you can you know fill your vessel from the sink
or attach it to your hose for this. And of course you're going to need
nematodes. Nematodes come a couple of different ways.
Most of the time they come in a powder form that you can scoop into a vessel
and fill it with water. Or it comes in a really stinky sponge
that you put in a bucket of water and squeeze in
order to release the nematodes into the water.
So we're going to do that and then get moving, but first
let's talk about beneficial nematodes and what they do.
I'm going to focus on three beneficial nematodes. And by the way it's
nematode like nemesis, not neematode like neemesis. Anyway, beneficial nematodes
do a lot for your garden. They target certain pests
in the soil and on the leaf surfaces. So the three that are important are
Steinernema feltiae, Steinernema carpocapsae and
Heterorabiditus bacteriophora. Steinernema feltiae treats armyworms,
cutworms, cabbage maggot, coddling moth, corn ear worm, crane flies, cucumber
beetles, fruit flies, fungus gnats, raspberry crown borer,
thrips, and sweet potato weevil, and so much more. Steinernema carpocapsae
treats cotton bowl worm, cockroaches, cutworm, leaf miners, flea larva,
peach tree borers, flea beetles, strawberry root weevils,
and a bunch of other stuff. And Heterorobiditis bacteriophora
treats ants, asparagus beetle, borers, Colorado potato beetle, Japanese beetle,
June bugs, grapefruit borer, and a whole bunch of
other stuff. The important thing to start with is to
figure out how much the vessel you're planning on using
covers certain amounts of space in your garden. I know I
can fit four gallons in here and with four gallons I can cover
the backyard, or the front yard, or my community garden plot. So I'm going
to divide my package of nematodes into three
different batches so that I can cover all of those
areas. So I'm going to divide these each of
these because I got all three
into my I'm going to do probably a half scoop of each of these,
scoop of each of these half tablespoon yeah basically I'm gonna do
and then that will get me three batches. They are stinky by the way.
So these are going to go back in the fridge until I'm ready to do my second
batch. Because they're living organisms and you
want them to stay alive and cold and happy
until you're ready to use them again. Okay
next, now that this is in here I'm going to fill this with water and start
spraying.
If you use a backpack sprayer make sure that the
nozzle on the end of it is wide enough to release microbes
out into the world. Otherwise they'll just stay in your in your backpack
sprayer. It needs to have at least an opening of
400 microns in order to make that work.
Sometimes this powder can be a little clumpy so you might need to stir it.
It's gonna be a little heavy, it's okay. All right.
Okay, let's do this.
Always grab your hose nozzle before you pick up the backpack
because you won't be able to reach it afterwards. So now you pump and
get going.
This Valencia orange tree has leaf miners and one of the
three types of beneficial nematodes treat them.
Hey Mittens. She seems to be making appearances in my garden
more and more, in my garden videos I mean.
This is my squash patch and while we haven't had issues
with cucumber beetles and squash beetles here we have at my community garden plot
so we are treating the soil because they are vectors
for bacterial wilt. Beneficial nematodes also treat coddling moth
on the apple tree.
And peach leaf curl, and ants, and a bunch of other stuff. In garden
beds it's important to apply directly to the soil because your seasonal crops are,
you know, going to finish up at some point but the soil is always going to be
there.
look out Mittens.
By the way, beneficial nematodes are not going to
harm pets. They're safe for use. You do need to keep the soil
moist for the next week or so
to let them get going. don't let the soil dry out because when soil dries out
microbes go dormant or die. Beneficial nematodes are part of any integrated
pest management program including compost compost tea and worm
castings. It allows you to get back to gardening
and focusing less on treating bugs. If you like this video share it with
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Gardening for Geeks which talks about beneficial nematodes and so
much more. Happy gardening!