[LittleRedHen]

Unfortunately, my husband smokes. BUT I saved his old cigarette butts last year and made a tea with them that I strained and sprayed on all of my veg.  Not a single bug !- not even on the roses! 

[Salmo]

Nicotene was banned as an insectacide because it was carcenogenic, i.e. causes cancer.

[Brambles]

Our garden is stone walled.   We have never had any problem with carrot fly, I wonder if this is why, as they would not be able to get as high as our 4ft - 6ft walls!   In Victorian times most of the large vegetable gardens were stone walled too..  Is this the answer???

[woodburner]

The legal watchdogs said that it would be illegal and the thread fizzled out. It would be nice if this one didn't though, as knowing how our forefathers coped is rather interesting.

If the thread's purely for curiosity then it's fine, but we've already had a couple of people expressing interest in home-brew insecticides, which are very dubious legal ground - if someone got poisoned trying it, the site owner could be held responsible for giving the idiots somewhere to get information.

That's possibly why it wasn't mentioned on the victorian farming program, at least I don't think it was, I remember the tomato leaf one though. For those considering using tobacco 'tea' I would add that there is also green tobacco sickness to consider. Tobacco is not nice at all.

Our garden is stone walled.   We have never had any problem with carrot fly, I wonder if this is why, as they would not be able to get as high as our 4ft - 6ft walls!   In Victorian times most of the large vegetable gardens were stone walled too..  Is this the answer???

That's what I've been wondering too. Perhaps carrots were a delicacy for the well to do with walled gardens rather than the cottagers who would have had to stick with swedes and turnips. Walled gardens go back to Tudor times and possibly even earlier. Plenty of time to develop carrots from a wild form to a more succulent but also more pest prone version.

[Idra]

Hi i am a newbie to the site from Burnley Lancs, carrot fly cannot fly higher than 20 inches from ground level so i plant mine in high raised beds or dustbins. Not had a problem with them yet.

[paintedlady]

Nicotene was banned as an insectacide because it was carcenogenic, i.e. causes cancer.

Ah - not strictly true.  Nicotine can be toxic, but if you are trying to extrapolate nicotine with cigarettes/smoking, the current thinking is that the quantitiy of nicotine available in inhaling smoke does not cause cancer but causes addiction.  Due to its physiological action on the body, it will assist other agents or be responsible for the accelerated growth of tumours already in existence.  Nicotine is also readily absorbed via the skin (patches ring a bell?) so without adequate protection, you would be exposing yourself to dosages in excess of that a heavy smoker would be used to.

Nicotine is a plant alkaloid and its purpose is solely as a natural insecticide - it just so happens to be concentrated a lot more in the tobacco plant which is cultivated for the smoking industry.  Imidacloprid on the other hand is a derivative of nicotine and widely used as an insecticide in the agricultural industry - however, this has become questionable as its popularity seems to go hand in hand with the rapidly declining bee population.

[diggerjoe]

as tagettes and marigolds seem to deter what about steepiong them and using them to make a spray would that be as toxic?

[woodburner]

I think I should really have put this in chat. I'm not looking for new ways of dealing with the problem so much as trying to figure out how come carrots ever became popular in the first place! 

[DD.]

May as well leave it here, it is about veg after all.