How to Apply Beneficial Nematodes to Control Pests in Your Garden

Good morning gardenerds, I’m Christy Wilhelmi from Gardenerd. And I’m whispering because it’s Sunday morning at dawn, which is the time to apply beneficial nematodes to your garden. So that’s what I’m doing today. I wanted to kind of walk you through the process in case you want to do some of this for yourself. Beneficial nematodes do a number of things.

In fact, they pretty much solve a lot of pest problems in your garden. But the trick is you have to apply at a certain time, and you may have to reapply more than once in order to catch them, to interrupt the life cycle of these various pests that often pupate in the soil. So I’m going to walk you through the process. Here’s how we do it. First up, you’re going to need some way to apply the nematodes to soil surfaces and to leaf surfaces.

So you can do that one of two ways. You can use a hose end sprayer like this or a backpack sprayer which is my favorite thing in the world, because it’s, you know, it’s like the gardening equivalent to power tools. Awesome. You’re going to need a water filter. This is a hose…an inline water filter. Or you can you know fill your vessel from the sink or attach it to your hose for this.

And of course you’re going to need nematodes.

Nematodes come a couple of different ways. Most of the time they come in a powder form that you can scoop into a vessel and fill it with water. Or it comes in a really stinky sponge that you put in a bucket of water and squeeze in order to release the nematodes into the water. So, we’re going to do that and then get moving but first let’s talk about beneficial nematodes and what they do. I’m going to focus on three beneficial nematodes. And by the way it’s nematode like nemesis, not nematode like nemesis. Anyway, beneficial nematodes do a lot for your garden. They target certain pests in the soil and on the leaf surfaces. So, the three that are important are Steinernema feltier, Steinernema carcasses and Hetero rigidities bacteriotherapy.

Steinernema feltier treats armyworms, cutworms, cabbage maggot, coddling moth, corn ear worm, crane flies, cucumber beetles, fruit flies, fungus gnats, raspberry crown borer, thrips, and sweet potato weevil, and so much more. Steinernema carcasses treats cotton bowl worm, cockroaches, cutworm, leaf miners, flea larva, peach tree borers, flea beetles, strawberry root weevils, and a bunch of other stuff. And Hetero rabidity’s bacteriotherapy treats ants, asparagus beetle, borers, Colorado potato beetle, Japanese beetle, June bugs, grapefruit borer, and a whole bunch of other stuff. The important thing to start with is to figure out how much the vessel you’re planning on using covers certain amounts of space in your garden. I know I can fit four gallons in here and with four gallons I can cover the backyard, or the front yard, or my community garden plot. So, I’m going to divide my package of nematodes into three different batches so that I can cover all of those areas.

So, I’m going to divide these each of these because I got all three into my I’m going to do probably a half scoop of each of these, scoop of each of these half tablespoons yeah basically I’m going to do and then that will get me three batches. They are stinky by the way. So these are going to go back in the fridge until I’m ready to do my second batch. Because they’re living organisms and you want them to stay alive and cold and happy until you’re ready to use them again. Okay next, now that this is in here, I’m going to fill this with water and start spraying.

If you use a backpack sprayer, make sure that the nozzle on the end of it is wide enough to release microbes out into the world. Otherwise they’ll just stay in your in your backpack sprayer. It needs to have at least an opening of 400 microns in order to make that work. Sometimes this powder can be a little clumpy so you might need to stir it. It’s going to be a little heavy, it’s okay.

All right. Okay, let’s do this.

Always grab your hose nozzle before you pick up the backpack because you won’t be able to reach it afterwards. So now you pump and get going. This Valencia orange tree has leaf miners, and one of the three types of beneficial nematodes treat them.

Hey Mittens. She seems to be making appearances in my garden more and more; in my garden videos I mean. This is my squash patch and while we haven’t had issues with cucumber beetles and squash beetles here, we have at my community garden plot, so we are treating the soil because they are vectors for bacterial wilt.

Beneficial nematodes also treat coddling moth on the apple tree. And peach leaf curl, and ants, and a bunch of other stuff.

In garden beds it’s important to apply directly to the soil because your seasonal crops are, you know, going to finish up at some point but the soil is always going to be there. look out Mittens. By the way, beneficial nematodes are not going to harm pets. They’re safe for use. You do need to keep the soil moist for the next week or so to let them get going. Don’t let the soil dry out because when soil dries out microbes go dormant or die. Beneficial nematodes are part of any integrated pest management program including compost tea and worm castings. It allows you to get back to gardening and focusing less on treating bugs. If you like this video share it with your friends and don’t forget to subscribe and click the notification button so that you can find out when our next video comes online.

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