Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Could someone please tell me how to get rid of these caterpillars that are eating my bean and tomato leaves. Also there is a small hole or two in the small tomatos. Could it be this critter as well?

Obviously I need something that won't affect my Tilapia.

Many Thanks

you have it now synaptoman...
thumb and forefinger!
Meditative is work good for the soul!

do you get Yates products over there? If so try Dipel, or BT (dunno what it stands for)

thanks doc

Here we call those fellas lawn grubs (or at least I do ). They don't stay in the lawn though. Generally make the trip into the beds etc at night.

from my experience pretty much nothing is 100% going to keep them off your plants in AP. natural remidies lack the punch harsher chemicals provide. having said that, you can usually keep the crop loss down to something like 1 tomato in 5 with a grub bite in it, and maybe 1 in 10 that's spoiled.

if you have kids train them to go grub hunting and feed them to the fish. dipel will work reasonibly well until it rains

I found Dipel to be extremely effective, cleaned the lot up. But as Timmy says - will get washed off in the rain, which incidentally is weather loved by the grubs .

Synapto.... could well be tomato hornworm... see attached picture...

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 812#109812

and link in gnashs thread ....

http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/dp_hfrr/extens ... rnworm.htm

Dipel works a treat on these little bludgers

Thanks for everyones help. Yes, we do have Dipel in South Africa. I've sent the good wife to go and buy some and I'll test and report back,

and what is the bad wife doing?

Don't joke, this is South Africa, we are allowed to have up to 8 wives (1 legal and 7 traditional) unless you are a king (unlimited). Even our next president has just married his 6th wife this last weekend. The bad wife (ex) lives in Perth.

oh

You mean that you're allowed to export them..... darn... noone told me about that one

Ooops, you mean she's a local here?

I've got a pack of dipel there but I haven't got around to opening it yet, caterpillars have only been average this year and so I haven't bothered.