Calceolaria fothergillii

[michael z]

Finally flowering!

Michael

[Claire Cockcroft]

Congratulations!  The plant looks very healthy and happy.  Well done.

[johnw]

Kudos to you Michael. That one is a real challenge. For me it was in a trough and born with aphids I swear.  I had a screen teepee over it and would pick off the aphids with a needle dipped in Tanglefoot twice a day.  I grew weary of the routine and so did it.

john

[michael z]

I will pollinate them, and hopefully will have seed to donate for the seed exchange. Calceolaria uniflora is also very strong this year, but up to now no flower buds appear. In Germany it is quite cold this year, this Calceolaria species seem to enjoy the "bad" weather.

[michael z]

Now in full flower.

[ArnoldT]

Michael

Those are just wonderful.

[Lesley Cox]

And flowering so well Michael. I managed to keep mine free from greenfly for a season but had no such joy with C. uniflora. I tried daily spraying with a dilute soapy spray which worked for a while but then I was away for a few days and it wasn't done. B :-\esides, there really is more to life.....

[Lesley Cox]

That's Besides...

[MarcR]

And flowering so well Michael. I managed to keep mine free from greenfly for a season but had no such joy with C. uniflora. I tried daily spraying with a dilute soapy spray which worked for a while but then I was away for a few days and it wasn't done. B :-\esides, there really is more to life.....

I know that we try to avoid commercial insecticides and stay organic. However, when white fly, greenfly, aphids or other soft bodied  insects become a persistent nuisance; malathion is very effective, has relatively low toxicity, and breaks down into non-toxic products in about 25 days. 

[Vinny 123]

I know that we try to avoid commercial insecticides and stay organic. However, when white fly, greenfly, aphids or other soft bodied  insects become a persistent nuisance; malathion is very effective, has relatively low toxicity, and breaks down into non-toxic products in about 25 days.

Malathion is not available in the UK for amateur horticultural use (it was banned 20 years ago)- it may still be licenced for professional use only, probably not for outdoor use. It is still licenced for medical use (lice etc.) and has been on and off the permitted list for treating buildings housing poultry (usually pigeon lofts - Duramitex).

Checking my facts, I was amazed at what is now banned - copper fungicides, sulphur powders....................

https://www.rhs.org.uk/prevention-protection/withdrawn-chemicals

[MarcR]

Vinny,

I certainly believe you; but that is ridiculous!! Malethion has the best effectiveness, and the highest LD50 of anything made.  Do they at least allow Rotenone?

[Vinny 123]

Rotenone also banned here in the UK.

An awful lots of chemicals are banned in the EU/UK, or very strictly controlled, that are used reasonably freely in the US, not least food additives.
A very few are allowed commercially under derogation - a couple of neo-nic's are for just a handful of crops where nothing is available as a realistic alternative. Asulam similarly in certain sites as it is about the only thing that kills bracken (a serious and fast-increasing problem in many hill areas of the UK). The debate over glyphosate (Round-Up) continues......

Why sulphur would be banned, I have no idea, although it will be on the www somewhere. I know that there were considerable concerns about agricultural use of copper fungicides on organic crops/land as it was allowed under Soil Assoc. rules - the worry was about build-up in soils. We drink water that travels through plenty of (metallic) copper pipe, so why amateur use was banned...................... the usual forms were fine powders, but very heavy, so not a realistic dust hazard.

Creosote was banned maybe 15 years ago, unless you have a pesticide licence, which means amateur use, or use on products destined for domestic use (eg. fence panels), are illegal. What replaced it (not least CCA - copper-chrome-arsenic - originally available as Tanalith) have since been banned or are worse than useless. When the ban came in, legal sources of recycled railway sleepers (a favourite landscaping product with many) disappeared, although most/all(?) sleepers are now concrete in the UK.
The equivalent of CCA is now copper and cypermethrin.

[MarcR]

Vinny,

Many vendors of Horticultural supplies offer Praying Mantis, &/or Ladybird beetles.
Both can be effective.  Have Biological remedies also been banned?

[Vinny 123]

Both can be effective.  Have Biological remedies also been banned?

Not at all, very far from it, although it would be more accurate to say that quite a few are permitted - introduction of non-natives species etc.
Nematodes are freely available for slug and leatherjacket control, but I sincerely doubt that they are economic on a professional, agricultural scale. A few predators are also available for control for glasshouse pests - mostly parasitic wasps but also predatory mites.

There is (or was) a huge business in supplying bumblebee colonies to commercial glasshouses, to improve pollination of things like tomatoes.

Our climate, even inside glasshouses, restricts what might be viable and there is a preference for licencing glasshouse critters that could not survive outside of one here.

The one thing that they all require is use under optimum conditions - releasing a spider mite predator when there are very few spider mites means that your predator will starve. Outdoors, temperature and soil moisture levels have to be right for nematodes to work well.
Biological control is just that - very much control.

[Leucogenes]

Today...😎