This stuff is for vegetables and herbs?
I signed up for the Home Depot garden club just to see what’s up. The latest one received was focused on edibles
"Honey, the lettuce tastes funny."
with the newsletter saying, “Recent surveys reveal that homeowners are embracing edible gardening with unprecedented enthusiasm. It’s not surprising—vegetable garden planning and planting is enjoyable and easy. Nothing compares to the freshness and flavor of home-grown vegetables and herbs. By harvesting your own food you can control the level of pesticides and herbicides used on them…”
To help you control those levels of pesticides Home Depot provided me with a coupon for $5 off Bayer Advanced Fruit, Citrus, and Vegetable Insect Control. Doesn’t tell me much about it, but it has to be safe or the garden experts at The Depot wouldn’t be offering me a coupon for it. Here is Bayer’s website where the label can be viewed. Unless you know where to look the ingredient list is hard to see. I know where to look!
The active ingredient in this product is called, Imidacloprid. Here is the Wikipedia page for the insecticide. What struck me was the nature of the pesticide. According to the Wikipedia article, “is a nicotine-based, systemic insecticide, which acts as a neurotoxin and belongs to a class of chemicals called the neonicotinoids.” The article continues, “Imidacloprid is one of the most widely used insecticides and can be applied by soil injection, tree injection, or broadcast foliar or ground application as a granular or liquid formulation or as a pesticide-coated seed treatment.“
Here is the part that really got my attention, “Imidacloprid is a systemic chloronicotinyl pesticide, belonging to the class of neonicotinoid insecticides. It acts as a neurotoxin and interferes with the transmission of nerve impulses in insects by binding to specific nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. As a systemic pesticide, imidacloprid translocates or moves from the soil into the leaves, pollen, and nectar of the plant.”
This stuff is trans-located from the soil, and moves through the plant systemically. It’s inside the vegetables you will be eating! It is also in the pollen of the plants. Since it’s systemic any animal, including honeybees, will pick up the poison. Oh, did we mention that the active ingredient, “is receiving increased attention as a possible factor in colony collapse disorder, a mysterious condition that causes sudden death of honey bee populations”?
I would love to hear from an expert on how long it takes the pesticide to leave the plant. You apply this to lettuce. How long before there is no measure of pesticide left in the parts we eat? I really don’t know. I can’t imagine applying a systemic insecticide on plants we are going to eat. Apparently they use it on commercial crops of lettuce and other plants. Why am I even growing my own vegetables? So I can fill them with this stuff?
I am open minded. After being in the nursery business for over 30 years you think you have heard it all. People grow vegetables for a variety of reasons, and what they put on them is up to them. The problem is, people new to vegetable gardening assume the place where they buy those plants would know what’s safe to use on edibles. Home Depot makes a point how they sell Bonnie grown vegetables, with no GMO’s. What’s the point if your going to load them up with a systemic, synthetic pesticide? Again, how knowledgeable is the first time gardener or employee in the garden department of Home Depot? Should you trust you families health and well being on a $5 off coupon for systemic insecticide for you herbs and vegetables?
My latest blog post at The blogging Nurseryman,"This stuff is for vegetables and herbs?" http://t.co/ffIhqMc via @pitsenberger
Imidacloprid is one of the chemicals that I absolutely won’t use. SO much information about it as a bad actor, both against bees and against non-pest insects, and not enough information about what this neuro-toxin does to non-insect animals. It bothers me that a lot of seeds are pre-treated with it, and you have to really fight to get that answer out of seed-sellers… so that even if I plant the seed in organic soil, fertilize it with compost tea, and spray it with only organic insecticides, the plant would have these synthetic neonicotinoids all the way through it. Disgusting!
Michael, agreed! It sounds disgusting. Just not into pesticides that are translocated inside a plant I am going to consume.
According to the University of Massachusetts ( http://www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/plant…/imidacloprid.pdf ), Imidacloprid may INCREASE spider mite populations. And, a whitefly species in Europe has already developed a resistance to imidacloprid. Mother Nature bats last.
This stuff doesn’t belong on the open market. Period.
We have a different formulation, for extremely limited usage at my nursery, and even then I hate using it (I am a licensed applicator). Here are the caveats that we follow in usage:
1) Plants being sprayed can’t be in bud or bloom. Furthermore, they can’t be NEAR plants that are blooming.
2) This can’t be used on edibles. EVER! Its usage is limited to ornamentals and NON-bearing fruit and nut trees, which means trees that will not be harvested within a year of treatment.
3) We don’t use this (and a long list of other chemicals) if there is rain in the extended forecast.
I don’t know how Bayer managed to take such a terrible chemical and get it authorized with pre-harvest intervals of 1-5 weeks (according to their label), but it seems like a lot of people are going to be ingesting a lot of nasty chemicals, thanks to the big box.
Ortho had a systemic for food crops as well. DEC in New York took it off the market right away
Oh my, how scary! I wouldn’t go near that stuff.
it doesn’t HAVE to be safe just because home depot sells it. it could be MADE in china and we all know how safe everything is that comes from china. in fact an item as simple as honey that comes from china is not safe so what the chinese do it route it thru another country or they sell to say the philippines or thailand and there they mix it with home grown honey and reexport it to the usa under another label and country of origin.
if it sounds nasty it probably is.
All pesticides can be dangerous (including organic) when applied
or used incorrectly. Most problems arise
when home gardens do not read and follow label instructions. While I am not promoting the “recreational”
use of systemic pesticides on vegetables (or ornamentals for that matter) I do
acknowledge that they have a place. For
example, for the last 3 years my 10 grape vines have been defoliated by
leafhoppers. The leafhoppers have moved
into the majority of my perennial herbs (Echinacea, wormwood, oregano, mint,
lemon balm, lemon verbena, etc… and defoliated them. I have
tried all organic means of control (neem and extreme garden hygiene) without
results. Before this product became available, my only option was to remove all
infested plants (which may not help at this point). Tonight, with a smile, I am
going to apply this product. Will I use it forever; No. As far as the health is concerned, many
vegetables including most lettuce and spinach that you buy at the store or eat
from a salad bar have been treated with this product. It been used in commercial agriculture for
years. I will, however, read the label
carefully and follow the directions to the tee.
I sure wish that all home gardeners would do same.
Anyone know of a watchdog site or another way to determine if these systemic pesticides are in the produce I am eating? One article I read said “over 30% of the produce sold” now uses this “Parkenson’s on a Plate.”