ORGANIC LEAF MINER CONTROL ON CITRUS AND OTHER PLANTS

we will see how to control leaf miners on your citrus plants and almost any other plant leaf miners mostly attack the citrus plants as you might already know and I know a lot of you might be wondering what to do to get rid of these leaf miners today we will discuss a solution so to control leaf miners you need two things you need spinosad which is available as a dead bug concentrate it's completely organic and natural and you also need mineral oil and this bonide all season spray oil is easily available and some mineral oil now if you look at the instructions it say is that in Central and Southern California you use about 1.5 to 4 tablespoons of this oil per gallon so that's just a rough idea depending on where you live you can use approximately the same amount and let's look at what the spinner said spray says it says to spray four tablespoons in a gallon of water so that's what we will be using so the mineral oil and the spinner set together have a powerful synergistic effect which you will soon find out so we're going to be measuring out the mineral oil first four tablespoons added in this gallon sprayer so mineral oil is completely organic natural very safe to use you don't have to really worry about anything while using this mineral oil so let's add four tablespoons of this mineral oil in our gallon sprayer now what the mineral oil does is that it smothers all the insects that are sitting on the plant including bugs or eggs or larvae of the insect but it's a temporary solution and that's why we also need to use Pino said which is more of an attacking ingredient the spinosad bacteria will stay on the plant for at least a few days assuming it doesn't rain heavily in your area and what it will do is it will sit on the plant and make sure that anything that's there on the plant is killed now remember that both Spinoza and mineral oil should be applied late in the evening when the Sun has died down and the honeybees are less active because Spinoza also kills honeybees and you do not want to kill a lot of honeybees as far as the treatment frequency is concerned you should spray once a month during the growing season and to make things easier just check out the calendar and then keep taking the months that you've completed spraying so this is the first citrus plant we will be treating today this is the semi-dwarf washington navel orange plant and if you take a closer look at this plant look how much damage the leaf miners have done they just bore through all the new growth in your citrus plant and leave the plant almost lifeless so not only does a leaf miner give a bad look to your plants aesthetically but will it will also hamper fruit production in your citrus plants and it will attack any new growth in your citrus plant so it's important to get rid of them so let's start spraying the citrus plant all I need to do is make sure you spray over and under the leaves make sure you completely drench the plant and if you notice it's late evening here so it's very important that you spray late evening the reason for spraying late evening is that if you spray anytime during the morning time the Sun is going to come out and the oil and the water droplets on the plant act like magnifying glass and they will kill your plant they will burn your plant and you really don't want that to happen so you must spray this in the late evening now I know my sprayer is a little leaky you can see some fluid dripping down from the bottom of the hand sprayer and I know I need to get that fixed but this is what I have as of now and luckily neither spinosad nor mineral oil are toxic to human beings or pets so a little bit of the liquid touching your skin is okay but if you are concerned about not touching the liquid I recommend you wear gloves so we are now going to be treating our semi-dwarf dancey mandarin tangerine and this plant produces really nice sweet and very delicious tangerines and the leaf miners have wreaked havoc on this plant as well so we're going to be spraying this plant in a similar way make sure you coat all the leaves over and under and finally we will be treating our Mexican lime plant this Mexican lime plant produces very nice seedless limes and this plant also has the same leaf manner problem as the other citrus plants