drtreelove

For those who may be interested - my 2 satang on neem pest control products, Written for my California customers and associates, but much of the info applies to Thail growers: Neem products have become wildly popular and in-demand as organic-program-compatible, less-toxic alternative to hard-chemistry pesticides. But there are huge misconceptions and disappointments due to incomplete and misleading information available, even from professional crop advisors, nurserymen, tree and landscape professionals, and applicators. The information is coming in but not everyone is getting it right. You will undoubtedly come up against questions on neem products, uses, effectiveness and application specs. I'm not an authority on the science of it, and mine is not the last word, but I have been using neem since I lived and worked in agriculture in India in the early 70s. Azadirachta indica is a beautiful tropical tree with many uses. There was a neem tree in my front yard on the edge of a village in Tamil Nadu, and I noticed that it was about 10 F degrees cooler under that tree. (That's a big deal in southern India where there are three seasons, hot, hotter and hottest.) The local villagers would stop by and break off 1/4" diameter twigs to chew and fray the end to use as a toothbrush; it has plaque control and body cooling properties. The organic farm where I worked used neem as a pesticide, so my exposure was to traditional culture going back centuries, as well modern IPM. My interest and love for neem started back then. I’ve been in communication with a primary neem products researcher in India, a PhD entomology professor out of Bangalore Ag University. Here’s my two cents to the best of my understanding: In the US there are three primary categories of neem products, with several variations: Azadirachtin concentrates are extracted from neem seed oil. Aza products are insecticidal, miticide, nematicide (nematodes), but not known as fungicidal. There are no plant diseases listed on Aza products labels: Azatin, Azamax, Azaguard, Azatrol, Azasol and Neemix as examples. They have Azadirachtin listed as the active ingredient, usually 1% to 4%. This is not the same as "neem oil". Azadirachtin is a highly concentrated form of the most potent of the many substances in the neem oil biochemistry. Many of the products are OMRI listed because they biodegrade rapidly, but that does not mean they are without risk to the applicator. Azadirachtin poisoning is become an issue with the increased use in the cannabis industry. Azadirachtin can go systemic or at least translaminar, but it should not be promoted that way because not all plant species will translocate all formulations in the same way. Only Azasol from Arborjet, (Soluneem in India) is water soluble and can be soil applied for root uptake or stem injected with specialized equipment. 70% Neem Oil on the other hand is not an Azadirachtin concentrate product. It is the residual oil substance after the Aza has been extracted. It relies on the horticultural oil properties, as well as the relatively dilute chemistry from neem seed oil, not the highly concentrated Azadirachtin. 70% neem oil (clarified hydrophobic extract of neem oil) has insecticidal, acaricidal (miticide), and fungicidal properties. It is similar in action to petroleum-based horticultural oils, with the added benefits of the incredible neem biochemistry with insect repellent properties. 70% Neem Oil labels list soft bodied insect pests and some plant diseases (ectotrophic plant pathogens such as powdery mildews and rusts), which Aza products do not. Monterey 70% Neem Oil and Garden Safe Neem and others are common on garden center shelves, Triact70 from OHP, Trilogy from CertisUSA, are available to professionals and more so now to the general public. Azadirachtin products are much more expensive than 70% neem oil. Neem chemistry has not been synthesized and is not likely to be, due to the complex natural biochemistry. And neem products are likely to get much more expensive, due to a pervasive insect-vectored fungal disease (Phomopsis azadirachtae), Neem Tree Dieback/Blight, prevalent and advancing in some of the primary neem plantation areas of India and Africa. 100% neem oil sounds good and some people think pure is better. But from my experience the 70% Neem Oil is more effective and plant friendly and doesn't coat and clog sprayers like the 100%. The emulsifiers are important for mixing and dispersing. 100% is more likely to be unevenly distributed and burn foliage. Neither should be applied to soil. Choice of product or products for a tank mix or stem injection will depend on the pest or disease, stage of life cycle and level of infestation or infection, budget, and products available to the applicator. One of the biggest issues that many gardeners and professionals don’t understand and therefore get disappointed and say neem doesn't work: Neem like many other bio-pesticides is not a knock-down insecticide like the hard chemistry synthetic products, insecticidal soap, or botanical pyrethrum, and there is only a few days residual effectiveness. Neem should be thought of as preventive or very early intervention, not curative for an advanced active pest infestation. And every product label clearly states, it has to be applied every week for a high pest pressure situation, or every two weeks for general purpose prevention. It has repellent, anti-feedant and reproductive disruptor actions, but not much knock down effectiveness. So, people use it once and expect to stop an infestation in its tracks, and it doesn't work that way. In Thailand there are Aza concentrate products available, and 100% neem oil, but I have not seen 70% neem oil that is prevalent and widely used in the US. Hope that helps.

I'm sorry to see that this question was overlooked all these months. But this forum is not the best for horticulture. Go to the Farming In Thailand Forum for better access to experienced growers with generous information, not just on commercial farming, but all matters for all growers, with an organic grower subforum. It's under-utilized and a fraction of usefulness that it used to be with ThaiVisa, half dead but still alive. This Plants, Pets, Vets forum may be better named Dogs, Cats and Snakes (with an occassional plants discussion) 😉. I think best for the request is to grow in containers, with a good homemade soil mix, -native soil/peatmoss/sand- plus a COF (complete organic fertilizer) with mineral and biological amendments. Container plantings can be moved to accommodate changes in the seasons. Now through April-May is the intensly hot dry season, then the hot and rainy season. Go with partial/afternoon shade, and good water management. Intense noonday - afternoon sun and water deficit are killers. The monsoon season downpours will get soil too wet, leach nutrients, and allow root-rot. So best to be able to move the plants or provide cover as needed.

I'm late to reply and maybe the pest problem has come and gone. But if not, or for others with similar concerns: Can you provide better info for identification of the pest? Photo of the actual pest, photo or description of the damage. Feeding at night - are you sure its not slugs or snails? If so, then neem or vinegar or other insecticide/repellent products will not be useful. The products mentioned, wood vinegar and neem products are good for some pest situations, but not all. The residual oil and strong vinegar taste may not be desireable for direct contact sprays, especially on leafy greens. Wood vinegar can be an effective insecticide, but it is a very harsh substance and must be used strictly according to recomended application rates and timing in the pest cycle. If too concentrated it can burn plant tissues. And for an organic program, it will certainly negatively affect the foliar microbiome and beneficial plant pest predators and parasitoids. There is a lot of misunderstanding about neem seed extracts and leaf decoction products. Many uninformed gardeners refer to all neem products as "neem oil", but there is a big difference in these products and appropriate use, timing and residual effectiveness. In general, neem products are best for preventive treatment, not for knockdown curative treatment of advanced infestations. Its important to differentiate between actual neem oil, like cold pressed neem seed oil, or 70% clarified hydrophobic extract of neem seed, or an azadirachtin concentrate emulsion, or a water soluble aza concentrate. Identify the pest and the damage being done, even if you have to set an alarm and go out at 2 - 5 am with a flashlight. Is the damage at an unacceptible level of loss where treatment is actually needed? For an organic program, this is an important determination. With a home garden for personal use, maybe some minimal chewing on leaf margins from early season caterpillars or slugs can be tolerated.

If it's din nieow/sticky soil and historically rice land, what about growing rice? In my opinion there is need for good quality regenerative ag organic rice in Thailand and for export, because what I have experienced over the last 20 years or more is the degradation of the flavor of rice, even the best commercial hom mali, just doesn't have that aroma and flavor anymore. This is most likely due to the economics for farmers, and soil fertility depletion and void in nutrient density that goes along with chemical farming. There are some organic rice farmers in Thailand, I went to an organic rice growers fair in Yasothon a few years ago, but "organic" for most growers just means reduced chemical pesticide use, and not necessarily optimum soil and plant health and nutrient density building. Therefore most rice is just empty carbs and tasteless dietary filler. Just add more chilli I guess. If anybody is growing quality organic jasmine rice with soil-food-web, regenerative ag priniciples and practices, I would love to know about it and sample some. Here's an interesting reseach paper from Laos on soil types. https://linquist.ucdavis.edu/sites/g/files/dgvnsk6581/files/inline-files/Saito et al 2006c.pdf

Not a Troy-Built, but a method worth consideration ...

For you and others who may be interested in my two satang, and you are committed to raising your own high quality food for personal and family health, food which will have far more nutritional and energetic value than anything you can get elsewhere -- If you are planting 'in the ground' and amending native soil, and you are planning a sizeable garden, then consider putting a little money out for soil analysis, interpretation of the soil test results, and prescription amendments, to start off right with basic mineralization. Purchase the recommended soil minerals and add biologicals, dairy-cow compost, vermicompost (worm castings), and composted poultry manure have, or should have if managed intelligently, an alive and active microbiome which is an important starter for soil and plant health. (This is "probiotics" for plants) A good EM, like that from Organic Totto, is primarily a highly charged biological soup with an engineered specific organisms mix, which is used as an inoculant, EM, (along with the biology in the composted manure, and the biology already present in the native soil), acts as a "biodigester" which acts on organic matter and to some extent on the mineral soil. This helps to build and activate the all-important soil-food-web and to prepare for nutrient cycling in your plantings. Personally, I also forage healthy aggregate (crumb) structured soil from un-disturbed, un-developed, un-farmed natural forest, for use as a soil biology inoculant, especially for sites with depleted, over farmed, or new construction sites with < 1% SOM subsurface fill dirt. Complete weeding and grading operations. Delay planting for at least a couple of weeks while watering and controlling weed emergence. Get your tools and materials in place. Prepare to incorporate (dig-in or roto-till) the Rx minerals along with the biologicals, to a depth of 25cm (6 inches) or more. Ideally let the planting beds lay fallow and water for a couple of weeks, to settle and activate the biochemistry. This time of year, consider seeding a mixed species cover crop (green manure) for over-wintering soil building. It all comes together once you've planted and dedicated to good soil and water management. One alternative is strictly "no-tillage" where you don't dig in or rototill the amendments, but everything is restricted to soil surface applications, or preferrably cover cropping and/or mulching. A primary point of no-till, is not interupting the active soil , soil structure, and established mycorrhizal fungal-root networks. This is important for established plantings and trees, but I find that limited tillage/digging/grading/incorporating is useful for a new garden or lawn for initial soil preparation and planting, in order to get a faster start at soil buiding. You can phase into no-till or limited tillage (infrequent only as needed,) Note: high NPK, high salt-index chemical fertilizers are so "last century", and may jack green growth, flowering and crop production, but are detrimental for the environment, long term soil and plant health, and the natural resistance of plants to pests and diseases. Anybody, like myself, whose primary education and experience happened 10 - 20 years ago or more, has a lot of catching up to do with modern soil and plant science, exciting new and emerging science coming out of the Soil Food Web School, Kiss The Ground and Regenerative Agriculture movement.

Centipedes may be present anywhere where there is dark damp spaces with decomposing organic matter and the smaller critters they feed on. So yes be careful and disturb the material with a probe of some kind, a shovel or digging fork before you put your hands in anywhere that you can't see. "it went away very fast" is a key observation. It won't likely go after you, it will go the other way if you give it a chance. I compost and garden and see them frequently but have never been bitten.

Are you planning your veggie garden for "in the ground" and you want to amend the "red rocky dirt or amazingly sticky black rice field clay"? Or are you planning to use raised beds or containers and you want to create an ideal soil mixture for 100% of the volume? And how many square meters do you want to plant. This all makes a difference in choice of materials, transportation and costs. Samut Songkhram is not that far from Nakhon Pathom and the home of Best Garden State (on FB and LINE I think), Swedish expat managed and a major supplier of organic program soil amendments and fertilizer materials, sacks or truck loads. And they provide state of the art soil testing and Rx amendments. (I have used their vermicompost, bonemeal, azomite, humates, bat guano and and other products for my own garden and for potting and fertilizer mixes). And also not far from you, in Samut Prakan we have Organic Totto and their excellent bokashi COF (complete organic fertilizer) and EM (effective microorganisms) (their excellent EM is now available at HomePro). For an ideal raised bed or container soil, recommendations often start with 1/3 each, clay loam, fine sand, and composted organic matter (dairy compost, vermicompost, peat moss). And then add specialty ingredients like pumice to improve soil moisture retention, and/or bentonite clay to improve nutrient holding capacity. Yes, unstable organic matter will decomp rather rapidly in a tropical climate, it's hard to maintain the ideal 3% or more SOM (soil organic matter) for the beneficial soil biology to thrive and facilitate nutrient cycling, but the SOM is an important factor for plant health, natural resistance to pests and diseases, and nutrient density in the food you eat. And SOM can be maintained to some extent by mulching; or replenished annually if you double dig, like with the Grow Biointensive method; or if you cover crop, as with Regenerative Ag practices. Coconut, rice hulls, and rice straw are available inexpensive mulching materials. I hope that helps, Don.

Bentonite / Montmorillonite clay has many uses. In horticulture, one of the ways it is used, which some growers may be interested in, is as a component of potting soil mix, to improve soil structure and CEC (cation exchange capacity). This facilitates nutrient holding capacity for the otherwise porous nature of most soil-less substrates which are used for container and raised-bed plantings . The clay in the engineered blend can help with soil moisture retention and to counteract the rapid leaching of mineral nutrients. And in agriculture: Farming in Thailand The application of clay technology by farmers in northeast Thailand, using bentonite clay, has dramatically reversed soil degradation and resulted in greater economic returns, with higher yields and higher output prices. Studies carried out by The International Water Management Institute and partners in 2002–2003 focused on the application of locally sourced bentonite clays to degraded soils in the region. These applications were carried out in structured field trials. Applying bentonite clays effectively improved yields of forage sorghum grown under rain-fed conditions.[39][40] Bentonite application also influenced the prices that farmers received for their crops. Production costs are higher, but due to higher production and the quality of the food, clay farmers could afford to invest and grow more and better food, compared to nonclay-using farmers.[41][42] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite

More information would be needed for help with plant selection. Location? I'm not sure what examples you will find much driving around "everywhere and nowhere" . Irrigation? A lot will depend on whether the screening you envision will have water or not. Without irrigation, consider solid fencing or shadecloth on the fence structure. Fence structure and height? If irrigated, do your privacy plantings need to grow above the fence height, or would a vine growing on the fence structure be adequate? Rangoon creeper is a beauty. Coral vine is more massive and requires a large solid fencing structure for support. Bouganvillea is a flowering favorite; it's thorny and impenetrable for security purposes, but needs space to ramble, or otherwise needs frequent pruning maintenace. For taller plantings, bananas and bamboo are relatively easy to maintain and are fast growing. Dwarf 'gluai-nam-wa' bananas are a favorite of mine for fast growing, fast fruiting, beautiful green privacy screening within a year. Palm groupings are another possibility. Most shrub hedgerow plantings are highly unnatural and high maintenance, and are one of the most frequent calls that I get for long term problems. https://www.thaigardendesign.com/plant-lists/

SoiDog2, Where ya been? African Baobab country I guess? Mature baobabs are a unique and iconic tree. That's a healthy looking seedling. Vitamin C? Never heard that one. How do you get up there to collect the leaves? How's the farm in Issan and your tree collections? Me and a baobab tree, Kruger Park SA 2002.

Pretty good ai response, Although from experience, depending on the depth of the sunscald, the underlying fruit can be affected with rapid browning.

Yes, sunscald is probably correct. Maintain shading of the fruit as well as the soil surface to prevent loss of moisture in the soil and the plant tissue hydration. Dried tissues will burn more easily. Deep water adequately during the dry season, Mulch the soil surface for retention of soil moisture. Nutrition matters! Biofertilization provides nutritional support for plant heath and resistance to environmental impacts.