Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Welcome to the UGA Cotton Team's Talkin' Cotton Podcast. This is a podcast for cotton growers, county agents, industry partners and anyone else interested in learning about science-backed cotton production and pest management. Our goal is to educate you with the most up-to-date data and information all season long. Talkin' Cotton will feature guests, such as, extension specialists, research faculty, graduate students, extension agents, industry allies and many others! Let's get into the why's of puttin' on, throwin' off and cuttin' out.
Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Breaking the System: Why Your Pest Management Decisions Matter
Hot weather, resistant pests, and critical timing decisions take center stage as the University of Georgia Cotton Team tackles the challenges of mid-season cotton insect management. This episode delivers practical, field-tested guidance for growers facing the boll-feeding bug complex and other persistent cotton pests.
Cotton entomologists Dr. Phillip Roberts and Mrs. Sarah Hobby break down the subtle but crucial differences between southern green and brown stink bugs, explaining why proper identification matters for control strategies. They share their expertise on scouting techniques, emphasizing the importance of internal bowl damage assessments using quarter-sized, soft bowls that reveal feeding activity from the past 24-48 hours. Their discussion of dynamic thresholds provides clarity on when intervention is truly necessary, with special attention to protecting those early, yield-determining bolls during weeks 3-5 of bloom.
Perhaps most alarming is the resistance of tarnished plant bugs to pyrethroid insecticides across Georgia. The team reveals testing results showing bifenthrin achieving only 25% control on average - a wake-up call for growers relying solely on this approach. While discussing the benefits of ThryvOn cotton technology for plant bug management, they emphasize it's "a tool, not a cure-all" that still requires vigilant scouting and potential treatment.
The conversation shifts to spider mites and whiteflies, both surging in the current hot, dry conditions. Detailed scouting protocols, including examining the critical fifth leaf down for those telltale "little lemon drops" of immature whiteflies, provide listeners with actionable guidance for monitoring and managing these increasingly problematic pests.
The episode concludes with a compelling personal anecdote about "breaking the system" - a vivid illustration of how broad-spectrum insecticide use can eliminate beneficial insects and trigger devastating secondary pest outbreaks. This powerful example underscores the importance of integrated pest management and thoughtful product selection.
Whether you're battling resistant plant bugs, monitoring for stink bug damage, or trying to stay ahead of spider mites and whiteflies, this episode delivers practical knowledge to protect your cotton crop during this critical production period. Subscribe to stay updated with the latest research and recommendations from the UGA Cotton Team.
Bringing you all things cotton production and pest management. This is the Talking Cotton Podcast with the University of Georgia Cotton Team. Let's get into the whys of putting on, throwing off and cutting out.
Speaker 2:All right, welcome to the Talking Cotton Podcast. Today is Wednesday, july the 30th. I'm Phillip Roberts, extension Entomologist, and I'm joined by Miss Sarah Hobby.
Speaker 3:She's on the board. Hello everybody.
Speaker 2:Hello, hey, small crowd.
Speaker 3:Small crowd, empty chairs, just me and you.
Speaker 2:Me and you. So Sarah has worked in cotton entomology for over 10 years, so hey, we're going to talk about insects today. Let's talk about bugs, maybe more than people want to hear. Probably I'm about tired, but anyway, just kind of to get going. Dr Hand always talks about the crop progress report, so I pulled that up earlier this morning. They put that out every Monday For the weekend. In July 27th, 93% of the crop was squaring, 58% set in bowls. That's very similar, just a point or two above the five-year average. So you know there's some late cotton out there. But actually where we sit right now we're tracking, you know, pretty normal to our five-year average. Also, on the crop conditions, again, this was ending July 27th 63% of the crop good to excellent, 31% fair, 6% poor or very poor. I'm optimistic about the crop. I think we have a lot of potential out there. Man, has it been hot this week? What about it?
Speaker 3:Very very.
Speaker 2:Very hot.
Speaker 3:High UV. Very hot, we UV.
Speaker 2:Very hot. We need a rain here, and I know there are other areas in the state that could use a rain. We've just been getting these scattered showers. Hey, I'm still optimistic. I mean, I want to be optimistic. That's the only thing can be. Hey, we're going to talk about insects. We're going to talk about bugs. Sarah, 58 of crops set in bowls. When we're setting bowls, what we think about?
Speaker 3:we think about the bowl feeding complex bowl feeding bug complex.
Speaker 2:You know, you forgot the bug. But no bowl feeding bug complex. You know, when we talk about bowl feeding bugs, first thing we think about is stink bugs.
Speaker 2:That's right, the stink bugs. Our growers do a really good job managing stink bugs. You know we got two primary species of stink bugs we deal with southern green brown. It's important to know the difference. You know if we have a lot of browns to really get good control we're going to have to use an organophosphate. When you add a low rate of biotin or acetate with a pyrethroid or run full rates of organophosphates to get good control of brown, pyrethroid alone is fair. If you don't have many browns, use a pyrethroid. Pyrethroids do a great job on southern green stink bug. So it is important to know if you have brown stink bugs out there. But when you mention the bowl feeding bowl complex, what else are we talking about there? What other bugs can feed on these bowls?
Speaker 3:Talking about some plant bugs clouded, tarnished.
Speaker 2:Clouded tarnished.
Speaker 3:And then some other bugs we don't think about, maybe some leaf-footed bugs.
Speaker 2:Leaf-footed bugs. You know probably get one to two calls every year on leaf-footed bugs Not a lot but it can happen. And now the tarnished plant bug and clouded plant bug. That's a little more common in the last couple years and you know, when we think of plant bugs, for years we just thought about them as pre-bloom pests. But that's not the case anymore. We can have them late in the year and both tarnished plant bug and clouded plant bug can feed on small bowls.
Speaker 3:Is there a way we can know what is feeding on that bowl?
Speaker 2:Not by looking at it. That's right. The only way we know is I get a drop cloth out and be observant when you walk in the field. But you know one of the ways we scout stink bugs we look for internal bowl damage, ibd you like to say IBD, but internal bowl damage, and you know stink bugs in particular are looking to feed on developing seed and when they feed on a bowl we're going to have what we call this internal bowl injury and what that is is a callus or warty growth on the inner surface of the bowl wall, these little warts or we could have stained lint, but those little warts get this question, so I'm going to bet Sarah knows the answer. How long does it take before we can see that injury when a stink bug feeds on a bowl?
Speaker 2:About 24 to 48 hours. 24 to 48 hours, that's right. We can start to see those warts form in 24 hours, but they're definitely formed by 48 hours. And that's an important thing because you know, we want to know what is happening in the field. Today, when we scout a field, so we know stink bug feeding, we can see that injury in 24 to 48 hours. So that's pretty good. And we sample bowls because it's just so hard to find stink bugs in a field. It is.
Speaker 2:And there's countless trials where we shake out very few stink bugs. We'll shake out a couple, but we'll still have IBD that exceeds our threshold Right. So another important point, and when we're going to do internal bowl damage surveys, what size bowls we pull?
Speaker 2:Quarter size diameter Quarter size Soft bowl Soft bowl 10 to 12 days of age. Soft bowl A soft bowl 10 to 12 days of age Very important. We select the appropriate sized bowl. Two reasons. Number one if you sample an appropriate sized bowl, it's easy to burst between your thumb and forefinger and then you just peel off those bowl walls and look for the injury on that inner bowl wall surface. If you sample a bowl that's very old, it's going to be very hard to bust Right. But more importantly than being able to break the bowl easily, we sample bowls about the diameter of a quarter for a reason because that's where stink bugs prefer to feed. And again, we want to know what's happening right now in a cotton field. If they're feeding on a 10 or 12-day-old bowl and you're sampling 20-day-old bowls, well, that's damage that could have occurred 10 days ago. Well, maybe we missed them. They can still feed on a bowl that's 20 days of age, but they don't prefer it Right.
Speaker 3:How do those thresholds change week to week?
Speaker 2:yeah, another good question. So with stink bugs we got what we call a dynamic threshold and when we report stink bug damage, ibd, internal bowl damage, whatever we want to call it we report a report, a percentage of bowls with injury or damage. Just because that bowl's been fed a pun doesn't mean it's not going to make cotton. You can have a damaged bowl. Sometimes it may fluff and pick fine, other times you may rot a lock or you may rot the whole bowl. We never fully understood all that but we do have a lot of confidence in these thresholds. But the thresholds vary by week of bloom and it's really simple math.
Speaker 2:As we go through a production year or a blooming period, the period of bloom, there are different numbers of bowls on a plant that are susceptible to stink bug feeding. The window when stink bug or bowl feeding, bug management, is most important is the third, fourth and fifth week of bloom, and the reason that is is because we have a lot of bowls to protect. You know, the first week of bloom there's only a few bowls on a plant. We can have a high threshold, but the third through the fifth week of bloom is a critical window. We have a lot of bolls to protect. Bolls are susceptible to stink bugs up to about 25 days of age. So as we get later in bloom like sixth, seventh week of bloom, some cotton may bloom eight weeks. In Georgia we have fewer bolls to protect so our threshold level goes up because you're not protecting as much cotton there.
Speaker 3:Isn't it true that the earlier bowls are your money bowls too? Oh yeah, More important to protect those.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the lower bowls on the canopy are important. They're bigger. A lot of our yield comes from the probably you know node the first 10 fruit nodes is a high percentage of the yield we make, so node 15 down. Um, so yes, very important, very important.
Speaker 3:So enough on stink bugs let's talk about some plant bugs what about some plant bugs? Okay, another reason to get your drop cloth out whenever you see what in the field.
Speaker 2:See a dirty bloom, a dirty bloom. Hey, if I see a dirty bloom I'm going to get a drop cloth out, because if I see dirty blooms that means I probably have immature plant bugs or I had immature plant bugs. And before we get too far on plant bugs, let's just make one comment. So we have tarnished plant bug and clouded plant bugs. They're different. They do similar type damage. Clouded plant bugs cause more damage than a tarnished plant bug. So when we scout or we find a clouded plant bug, what do we do, sarah? We multiply that by 1.5. Multiply it by.5. So if you find two clouded plant bugs on a drop, that's equivalent to three tarnished and you can add those counts together.
Speaker 2:But plant bugs is a problem, a pest that's become more problematic the last couple years. 2024 kind of got away from us in some areas. We've learned some things about them though this year. Oh yeah, we've come a long ways. First thing I'll say about plant bugs if you have them, make sure you address them appropriately. They're not everywhere, even in southwest Georgia, where we had some problems. It's not every field. It may be 20% of the fields, it may be more than that or less than that, but when we have a problem. It's a problem. I was in Midville last week, or this man sometime.
Speaker 3:Last week.
Speaker 2:Last week Couldn't find a plant bug Going tomorrow, couldn't find a plant bug Going back tomorrow. You know, it's so important that you know if you have them and the only way you can do that is to scowl these things. You can be observant walking across the field if you see dirty blooms. Hey, a dirty bloom is where a plant bug fed on a large square and the plant didn't shed it. You see anthers out of brown, a little localized discoloration. See some funky shapes of petals. Get a drop cloth out. But uh, you know, one of the things that we've mentioned is all back in the spring, sarah, we started sweeping plant bugs trying to understand more about their biology. But sometime after February yeah.
Speaker 2:But then we went all over the state. I don't know eight or 10 counties, something like that.
Speaker 3:A lot of counties.
Speaker 2:I know we went to Jefferson County. That's probably as far north east as we could get away from Tifton, terrell, dooley, tiff, grady, bullock, bullock. South Carolina. South Carolina Jenkins Candler. We left somebody out. Thanks to all the county agencies who helped us with that.
Speaker 3:Grady.
Speaker 2:Grady Grady. Yeah, well, what we did that for is in 2024, we observed poor control with pyrethroids on tarnished plant bug and you know that's one of the reasons we got behind on plant bugs. And we went to some fields together last year and what was bad, sarah, what bad it was bad, but we were pretty confident that pyrethroids weren't doing it. So we went all across Georgia and I was mostly interested in east Georgia where they typically don't have as many plant bugs. But we wanted to see, kind of monitor the susceptibility of plant bugs to pyrethroids and we chose to use bifenthrin. And we did this.
Speaker 2:I mean, we mixed up a spray solution of bifenthrin and sarah bought some organic green beans. We dipped them in the green bean, put them in a petri plate, put some plant bugs on there, let's see if they were dead or alive in 48 hours. Pretty simple stuff, easy peasy, easy peasy, easy peasy. But you know a couple things there. So when you dip a green bean in a spray solution, that's 100% coverage. When we're spraying a cotton field, I don't think we get 100% coverage.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:But the point is, when we looked at a high rate of bifenthrin, we were not seeing acceptable control. On average, we were killing about 25%. If I recall in that neighborhood it ranged from a low of 3% to. I think the most we killed was over 40%. But that's unacceptable if you have a problem, and so that's why, when we're talking about plant bugs this time of year, you know a lot of our growers are spraying bifenthrin for stink bugs and you know, maybe three or four years ago we killed plant bugs, or maybe we didn't have them this time of year, I don't know. The point is, if you're spraying bifenthrin and just think everything's okie-dokie on the farm, you've got plant bugs and it's not going to be okie dokie, no, but uh. So anyway, make sure you're checking all the bugs in the complex. You're checking all the bugs in the complex drop cloth, right, you know? And uh, our threshold is three per drop. A drop cloth is very good at sampling the immature stages does?
Speaker 3:Does our threshold change with Thrive-On cotton?
Speaker 2:No, actually our threshold is still going to be the same on Thrive-On or non-Thrive-On cotton. Thrive-on is a new trait Bayer developed. It was built to help with plant bug management programs, does a great job protecting cotton from thrips, on a side note. But Thrive-On is a tool. It's not a cure-all. It helps make this plant bug situation be more manageable. We still need to scout it. We've had trials here in tifton a couple years ago where we exceeded threshold and thrive on cotton. We far exceeded threshold and non-thrive on cotton but we got a yield response on non-thrive on. We also got a yield response spraying on threshold on thrivolum and we typically see fewer bugs on thrivolum. But it's not a cure-all. We still need to scout. We still need to be prepared to treat. Thrivolum doesn't have a lot of impact on adults. There seems to be some anti-preference in thrivolum. Thrivolum will kill some of the immature stages. It definitely slows their development. It helps buy us some time trying to get everything done but still needs to be scouted. Number one we're still using our same thresholds. We're looking at doing things different in Thrive On but we're not there yet. I know some of our colleagues in the Mid-South are really looking at maybe elevating the threshold and we'll see how that turns out. Cotton Incorporated shout out to them. They're funding a regional project and we're looking at different thresholds in Thrive On.
Speaker 2:But it's a tool. It's a tool. It's a good tool. It's going a tool. It's a tool. It's a good tool. It's going to help. It's not a cure-all. It's going to help make us manageable. I do want to mention Diamond. So Diamond is the insect growth regulator. It's kind of similar to Thrive-On. It's a tool. It's not a cure-all for plant bugs. But Diamond really doesn't impact adults but it does have pretty good suppression of immature stages. Had a lot of feedback this year where folks have used diamond in some of these problem areas and I really think folks that had problems last year probably ticked up their acres on Thrive-On and definitely ticked up their use of diamond. So you know good reports there and those are good tools to help us manage plant bugs.
Speaker 2:Well, you have had a lot of calls on spider mites, Yep and spider mites have really, really increased over the last seven to ten days since we did our last podcast. You know, it's been hot, it's been dry.
Speaker 3:Very.
Speaker 2:Spider mites like it hot and dry.
Speaker 3:We were in a dry land field two days ago. That looked pretty rough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little late on spraying that field, but we'll get it done if the sprayer will go. We're having sprayer problems.
Speaker 3:If you haven't listened in the past. It's still happening.
Speaker 2:But yeah, let's talk about spider mites. So we had a lot of calls, probably the most calls about spider mites in a long time. Again, it's been hot and dry, but for some reason there's just a lot more. You know, one of the first things to talk about is you know how we're going to scout for these things when we're going to make a decision, things like that. But yeah, what we're basically looking for with spider mites is we're looking for plants with symptoms, symptomatic injury, that would be. You want to describe it, sarah.
Speaker 3:Top of the leaf. You want to look for some speckling, some yellowing, reddening along the fold of the leaf and flip it over. You can see the webbing kind of looks kind of silvery and if you get a hand lens lens you can see if you can see any spider mites crawling around on the underside of the leaf. But the top of the leaf is really where you're going to see the first signs of the symptomology of them yeah, so you're looking for just subtle symptoms.
Speaker 2:and again, just to emphasize what she said, that fold in the leaf it may be just a little yellow speckling right in that fold. It may be red. Other important things she said flip that leaf over. Just because you have injury from mites doesn't mean you have mites still there. Beneficial insects, maybe a fungus, can crash these mites out. But we want to treat when about 50% of the plants, or when 50% of the plants have this injury from mites and mites are present and not like the field we looked at Monday where plants were red from top.
Speaker 2:I mean yeah, especially on the edges. But we just need to be prepared because they're out there. You know, you think you got to do something. We got some options because they're out there. You know you think you got to do something. We got some options. For years Abamectin has probably been the go-to product on bikes in Georgia Still is. One of the reasons was price point. Now there's some other effective compounds that are fairly economical, but Abamectin has still worked for the most part. We have had what I would term rate creep. Our rates have gone from more low rates to where we're now into middle to high rates on abamectin. There is resistance in other parts of the country. It's probably coming here one day. But you know, most years we don't spray a lot of mites here on cotton and hey, the way you get resistance is using the product a lot. Hey, it's back to the plant bugs. We should not be surprised. They're resistant to a pyrethroid. I don't know how many acres get sprayed every year with a pyrethroid for stink bugs. We selected for it.
Speaker 2:We got resistance, a couple other products, one Zeal, z-e-a-l zeal that's a another option. You got portal, um. There's a couple other things listed in the production guide but but uh, for the most part it's just getting on these mites before they get out of hand. You know, the good news is, the closer we are to cut out, the potential yield loss really goes down when we can get in big trouble. If we get mites on square and cotton or mites during the first or second week of bloom, if these things get bad and you don't control them, I mean they can defoliate a plant.
Speaker 3:They typically start on the edge of the field. A lot of times we see them on the edges, so if you've seen them deeper into the center of the field, you may want to, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think we have something in the production guide that may even talk about doing border sprays. Right, if someone's a real intense manager or has the time, you can do these border sprays trying to keep them out of the field. Light poles in the field edges, and why is that? You got weeds around that light pole, you got weeds on the edges, guess where the mites were In the weeds, in the weeds. I had a question yesterday and they were saying, well, how do these things move? They balloon, they balloon, they swing. I mean mean they get blown in air currents, they move on equipment, a lot of things. But you know, you got these weeds that may support a few mites and then they just move in and for some reason, I have no idea why, if you're next to a dirt road I don't know if it's the dust does something with the beneficial, I don't know, but they really like dirt roads.
Speaker 2:You see these little red spots in fields. You know we were over in Worth County a few years ago. You remember that we were near dirt road. We'd see these little red mite hot spots. Yep, we were over there looking at thrival and thrips and all kind of crazy stuff, but uh, but you know you'll have these hot spots in fields, but uh, you know, if they're spread across the field you might need to try to nip these things in a bud. And if you're late and you're in trouble, you can't repair that damage. But if it's bad, it may take two applications, you know, five, seven days apart. I mean don't want to hear it, but it is what it is right.
Speaker 3:Well, another insect pest that enjoys the hot, dry weather, no, I know you know false change. Give you one guess false change wrong.
Speaker 2:They do like hot, dry weather. I believe sarah's talking about white flies and uh, yep, so something's changed last little bit. So Sarah coordinates our whitefly monitoring program. She samples, or has her people sample, whitefly cards. Hey, a shout out to some of the agents. We got a couple agents who are checking cards. Shout out to those folks and hey, it's good information for our growers. But uh, one of the things she mentioned to me last week.
Speaker 2:She says, hey, these whiteflies ticked up a little bit on our cards, and then again this week and they've been running really low yes and uh, sarah's very observant in the field and and she watches stuff very closely and and if there's a whitefly in one of our fields she wants to know it's there. And you've probably seen them for six weeks, mostly singles yeah but it's changed again.
Speaker 2:It's probably in response to a lot of this heat and dry weather, but but numbers have really jumped. We were in field monday making counts and you know it wasn't uncommon to see five to ten per leaf and saw a few immatures and uh, I've been getting those same type reports from consultants and agents. You know something changed and that's good. I mean it's not good, it changed, that's bad. But it's good that people are seeing what our monitoring program shows and how you can find those that live data from these traps on the website. I think it's well.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure county agent can help you, but but anyway, starting to see a little reproduction, I have heard of a handful of fields that were treated. So a couple things on white flies while I'm thinking about it. Hey, it's almost august and uh, just over time, I think a lot of people that watch this white fly thing pretty close. If we can get to august and not see what we've seen already, usually we're good. But you know we're gonna have to treat some white flies in a historical area because numbers have jumped and uh, we didn't there, but in other parts of the state, you know, as we get away from this core area. You know they're still just seeing no whiteflies are single, so they may be all right, but it's all going to be weather dependent. Hot and dry really favors this whitefly thing to go.
Speaker 2:But it's so important even in these other areas, if you know you've got a few white flies in the field, that matters, right, it matters. And why does it matter? When you've got a few white flies, they're part of the equation. When we're making a decision on other pests, because we want to conserve beneficial insects, if we have to and only spray other pests based on scouting None of this automatic stuff for stink bugs Get out there and scout it. Thresholds work. We need to conserve beneficial insects so we can help slow these whiteflies down. But sometimes we have to make decisions we don't want to make and you just deal with it.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say speaking of scouting fifth leaf down from the top of the plant for whiteflies Important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, select the right leaf, number five main stem leaf below the terminal, and when you do that, what we're looking for is immatures Immatures stuck on the bottom of the leaf. A little lemon drop, better description.
Speaker 2:Kind of just little yellow stuck on the bottom of the leaf, a little lemon drop better description Kind of just little yellow things stuck on the leaf. If people haven't dealt with whiteflies sometimes they get confused with aphids. But you can brush aphids off Right. Whiteflies stuck, stuck on the leaf. So when we're scouting, let's say we pull 20 leaves in a field we want to look at each of those leaves individually. I personally like to do it in the truck with air conditioning on Right and we look at a leaf and if we see five immature whiteflies on that leaf we're going to consider that leaf to be infested. Less than five not infested. 50% of the leaves infested. We need to be in there.
Speaker 3:Time to go.
Speaker 2:Time to go, time to go and it go. Time to go. And it's so important to be timely with that first spray Because basically we've pushed the envelope and we're starting to see this reproduction of field. Those populations are fixing to go and go fast, right, I mean it could be 10 days, seven days they can go from. We needed to be in there until we got a problem. And what happens if we get behind? We're not going to be able to really go in with the igr. You know that most of the cotton in georgia, the management programs for white flies are built around igrs like knack. Uh, there's some generic pyroproxifens. Uh, courier, because you have to be so timely with those sprays, you get behind a little bit.
Speaker 2:We're going to spend a little more money to catch up products like a sale if you're really behind. You know big gun like saanto, you pay for it, you pay a lot for it, but it'd be economical to make good decisions. Try to conserve beneficial insects. Be timely with the IGR and take it from there. Conserve beneficial insects best you can. Now sometimes we're just gonna have to do things just like when we're dealing with these plant bugs. We're gonna have to add some stuff to the pyrethroid. I don't even know if we talked about products on plant bugs, but the pyrethroid is not going to control a plant bug. You're going to have to add an OP to it and you may have to. You treat them like a brown stink bug. Basically, everybody understands that.
Speaker 3:But you know, if you're forced to do some things.
Speaker 2:There could be consequences, but you do have to take care of the problem at hand. Hey, you had a good story about breaking the system. Oh, okay, real quick. Breaking the system and I like that term, breaking the system, and what we mean by breaking the system we go in there and kill all the beneficial insects. We broke the system. Try to keep this story quick.
Speaker 2:July 4th my house last year. My wife likes to have people come over to our house. We cook hamburgers, hot dogs, watch fireworks. We got a pecan tree in our backyard, not a big one, but a good shade tree, 30, 40 feet tall, I don't know. Have a buddy with a leaf blower that has a sprayer on it. I don't know what they're called, but I can blow a spray to the top of that tree almost. And the reason my I'm talking about a sprayer is we get these web worms, or whatever they're called, in the tree and they're terrible. You have a lot of caterpillars above your table. A lot falls out of that tree and you don't want what's coming out of the back end of those caterpillars in your food.
Speaker 2:So my wife always wants me to spray that tree and I usually put an IGR on them. And IGRs, you know, have minimal impact on beneficials. This one does in particular. Well, she wanted this sprayed and it was probably two weeks before July 4th. She says I'm seeing them web worms out there. You need to do something. I'm like, yes, ma'am, well, it was hot. This was probably sometime in the middle of June, you know, and busy, and I couldn't find my IGR. But I found that same IGR that was pre-mixed with a pyrethroid and I said that's good enough, I need to kill them webworms. I need to kill them Webworms. Make my wife happy.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 2:And came home, sprayed that pecan tree and man, did I kill the webworms? Didn't have any webworms, but unfortunately we had another problem. I broke the system and then what happened? That pyrethroid killed all the beneficial insects and I had more aphids than you can imagine Literally.
Speaker 3:What do aphids make?
Speaker 2:they make, honeydew comes out in the back end and they were literally dropping honeydew out of that tree. I had to pressure wash the swing because it had sooty mold all over the swing so we couldn't use the tree. And even though I got rid of them, web worms Wife wasn't happy. No, broke the system. But that's just an example. We can break the system Right.
Speaker 3:I mean.
Speaker 2:There's an ecosystem. And I just told you about. You know, I broke it with a pyrethroid there. Yeah, pyrethroids are not a walk through the park. But when we look at some of the other products, like these organophosphates, now we even worse. Now we even worse. Everything did Everything. So anyway.
Speaker 3:Spiders, the fire ants, yeah, all the things out there that are helping.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's all about making good decisions. This is all about insects. Yeah, all about insects. Best one yet, probably more than people wanted to know. But hey, let's wrap this thing up. Thank y'all for listening and and you all have a good day, see you.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Cotton with the UGA Cotton Team. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today, or if there's anything you'd like for us to talk about in the future, please contact your local UGA County Extension agent and, as always, you can find us on all major podcast platforms. Be sure to like, share with your friends and subscribe so you can stay up to date.
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