Over the past weekend I decided to regain control of the bush bean from the rampant baby hoppers that have been demolishing the leaves, quite literally too! Boy do these little things have an appetite, half to a whole leaf can be gone over night! As a way of defending the bush bean I mixed a solution of water and dish soap (2tbsp/1gal water) where I read somewhere was supposed to work. I sprayed the leaves of the bush bean and gave it a couple of days to see what would happen, everyday that past I looked in on the bush bean carefully taking note if there were any new missing leaves or baby hoppers still hanging about.
As you can see from the picture below the hoppers didn't miraculously disappear but my leaves continuously did. Okay, okay so I may be exaggerating a bit... in all honesty, the solution may have worked a little bit but not entirely and not nearly enough in my opinion, every day I find a new hoppers on my bush bean and I've noticed that they found the second bush bean as well, so here's to finding a new way! I really didn't want to go to the extent of killing these little dudes (because they are kinda cute) but I'm afraid my choices are very limited and I'd rather have my bush beans than a yard full of hoppers.
So... Second line of attack, dusting the bush beans with baking flour. Apparently a good dusting of baking flour will kill the hoppers, when they try to eat the leaves covered with baking flour the flour acts as a glue in their mouth sealing their mouths shut, eventually they die of starvation (which is kind of sad I know) but here goes for the sake of saving the bush bean and finding out what works!
WHAT I NEEDED (and what you'll need too if you decide to give this a go):
1. 1/2-1 cup of baking flour (I used all purpose flour since that's all I had in the pantry, I figure flour is flour? - I hope)
2. Sifter (easier to dust with, I would have much rather preferred a smaller sifter but this is all I had, on the brighter side it'll cover more space in a short period of time).
Armed with my baking flour and my sifter of steel I traversed down and pass the creaky back patio and dusted with my all!... The bush bean.
At first there was a gust of wind and that didn't work out too well for me but gusts of wind in SoCal is pretty far and few inbetween, I only had to wait for a few seconds to go on with my dusting, and it only took me less than a minute. I hope this works, we soon shall see so check-in for updates! Until then, happy gardening!
Read the previous post, Oh For Goodness Sake! Grasshoppers!
Read the later post for results on baking flour dusting, Anti-Hopper Flour Dusting, Does It Or Doesn't It work?
Did the flour work?
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