SOAP AND WATER..

Happy Thursday Everyone~

After the tour of Old World Brewery last week I went back to school to see my results after day 3 of applying neem oil to crickets. Turns out my numbers dropped even lower for direct and indirect application! This week I started a new trial of pesticide - SOAP AND WATER. My results after day 1 were a little scary. I had so many dead crickets that I thought something else may have been accidentally exposed to them but I checked the area and found nothing harmful other than my application of soap and water. I am concerned that my neem oil application may not have been as effective as I thought. I planned to use neem oil in my garden to keep pests out and away but my results are telling me to do something different. Im not sure if a soap and water application is the best route to go if I plan to apply it to edibles. Ill have to do a bit more research. Hope you guys are doing well on your projects!!

Peace
Jenni

NEEM OIL

Happy Thursday Everyone~

So excited to back at school!!. This past tuesday Matt got me another batch of crickets for my next round of natural pesticide experiment. I am using neem oil, which is a naturally occurring pesticide found in seeds from the neem tree. It has been used for hundreds of years to control pests and diseases. I made my neem pesticide in a 32 oz bottle using 5 ml of neem oil, water, and a few drops of liquid soap to emulsify the oil in water. Azadirachtin is the most active component for repelling and killing pests and can be extracted from neem oil. The portion left over is called clarified hydrophobic neem oil. I recorded my population after day one of exposure and my results were as follows:

control group 1 - 20    indirect application group 1 - 14     direct application group 1 - 8
control group 2 - 20    indirect application group 2 - 17     direct application group 2 - 12
control group 3 - 20    indirect application group 3 - 16     direct application group 3 - 12

My results indicate that direct exposure of neem oil is more effective that an indirect exposure. This means that if I were to use this in my garden against pest it would be better for me to apply this pesticide directly to pesty pests. YEY! I cant wait to see what my results yield after day 3. I'll find out tomorrow. . . after beer tour:)

Peace

20 - 3 = 17....right???

Happy Thursday Everyone,

I missed blogging last week and need to update you all on my cricket project. As many of you know I am testing different natural pesticides to decrease a 20 count cricket population in 2 different habitat settings. My first round of testing did not produce any valuable statical differentiation between indirect and direct application of diatomaceous earth. I did a second round testing the same pesticide and doubling the analysis period but noticed after the 3rd day that my crickets were breeding!! This was very unexpected and I was going to quit the project and immediately start another one. Instead I talked to Matt and I am continuing this project to see where it will lead me. I finished my second round of testing this past Monday, turned in my results to Matt, and my data still showed insignificant statistics. Im not giving up though, I am moving on to my next pesticide - neem oil- to see if I can get better results. Hope everyone is doing well, have a great week off:)

Peace
Jenni

the cricket in the top right corner is a newbe!!