[Sca-cooks] natural bug controls

[Stefan li Rous]

Angeline commented:
> What we did do with the cedar shavings which I have done before is we
> used them as mulch around the hardwood black walnut tree.  We are
> hoping it will keep those sort of tent catepillar worms from
> infesting the tree again.  They aren't tent catepillars they are
> something else, but I can't remember the name.

I don't know if this is ever mention in the plant books, but when I
had a bunch of little green catepillers crawling up one of my oak(?)
trees to get to the leaves for lunch, I put a line of goop, vasoline
or something similar around the tree trunk. The catepillers would get
stuck in the goop and die and until there were enough dead catepillers
that the rest of them just climbed over them, this was keeping them
out of the tree. So, I just occasionally added more goop. The rain
would eventually wash the goop away, but by then the catepillers
were gone.

Maybe this type of infestation goes in multiple year cycles, but I
haven't been bothered by these green varmints for several years now.
Previously they were distroying the tree's leaves.

--
THLord  Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas         stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****