Difficulties locating AzaMax- substitutes?

[terryros]

We ARE talking about Deborah. I imagine she has laminated print outs!

Definitely.

 

[southernbelle]

We ARE talking about Deborah. I imagine she has laminated print outs!

Pete and Terry: no laminated printouts (yet). You crack me up, Pete! You know me too well!! But, I do have those on the wall, for my light hours and temps chart for each month that came to me from one terryros! I don’t like having to keep any more than I have to in my brain at this point so I have often needed things (like St. Aug charts) in a ready access folder and something like my light, temps and fertilizer charts that I refer to monthly or more, ‘laminated’ (now framed) on the wall. Some of it has been so repetitive over time, it has stuck in my brain, but I often double ck myself.
Thanks, Terry, for the vote of confidence re this. If nothing else I am a detail person. But I can say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I pretty much know my limitations in this area, so try to seek reliable info. Having grown hybrid tea roses (before orchids) for 20 years which require spraying religiously every 2 wks in VA to keep them clean of black spot and other fungal, etc. diseases I had to learn, because once you get black spot it cannot be eliminated, only controlled. So I determined never to get it and was successful until I became ill and could not keep up my routine one year. And with thrips, mites, aphids and beetles it was a rare spray that did not include the addition of some insecticide to the spray.
Like our local orchid societies, at that time the local rose societies were a wealth of info, thankfully, because this was before the internet days. They had put together charts, similar to the St. Aug charts but with a lot fewer chemicals (one sheet) similar to the Specialty Chemical sheet St. Aug has. Their sheet indicated which chemicals to alternate that had different modes of action so no resistance of pests or disease developed which was crucial with repeat sprays every 2 weeks. They even purchased the professional concentrated chemicals in bulk and repackaged them in smaller affordable quantities for members. So when I started having, first scale, then mites, then thrips on my orchids I pretty much knew what to do except it was very challenging because of growing indoors. I don’t use orthene indoors, which I knew well for use outside for instance. But Safari (generic, Alpine way cheaper) and Azamax, etc. were new to me. So I was alternating Safari and Merit (imidacloprid) assuming (never assume) they had different modes of action when I really had no idea what kind of chemical Safari was. I was a bit lazy on that one.
A woman in our Va Orc Soc works for the EPA in pesticide labeling and gave a presentation where I learned about IRAC and all pesticides now being labeled by group. So it is now easy to be clear when you are alternating two that they indeed have different modes of action. Lord only knows we don’t need to develop pesticide resistant thrips!! So when I had not been successful in controlling them with the previous chemicals, I looked at the St Aug sheet and wanted something systemic, not harmful to blooms and specific for controlling them (not suppressing) without high toxicity and that’s why I settled on Overture. Only negative was price because of the volume but this is where as a society we can help each other use this type of thing. Sort of like those who get large quantities of virus test kits and cut the price in half for a group.