IGR's Talus vs Enstar II

[Bob in Albany N.Y.]

I hate all inscects on my orchids. Always looking for the easiest and best way to get rid of them. Have been using Enstar II for sometime now. The only problem I see with Enstar II is that you really need to make contact with the insect. That means hitting underneath all of the leaves. That is pretty hard to do with a large collection. Enstar II is used at the rate of 5ml per gallon. The bottle is a 5 ounce btl. and sells for around $80. They also tell you to do a second spraying about a week apart.

I have never used Talus, have any of you? It is my understanding the talus delivers toxicity by conact, ingestion and vapor activits. Where it seems as if Enstar only works by contact. Am I correct? What is the dosage for Talus. How many times in a row do you need to use it? How much powder comes per container and at what cost? Is it worth the money?

Thanks for any and all help.
Bob

 

[likespaphs]

i've used talus but not enstar. i used it for mealies and scale on only a few orchids but mixed genera. it seemed to have some good immediate action but i need to find a follow-up spray of a different chemical class in the next few days. for scale the label says to use it once then use a different class of pesticide.

there's a liquid formulation of talus now. i might suggest that as the water soluble packs of the powder kept breaking in the bag for me...
it is suggested that it only be used for scale once without rotating chemicals.
you, well, everyone's gotta rotate to control resistance....
actually, talus is a good example of resistance issues as the new q-biotype whitefly is resistant to several pesticides including (i'm pretty sure) talus...

(liquid) talus 40sc label

(powder) talus 70wp label

Dr Raymond Cloyd's Pesticide Mode of Action Chart and Pest Activity