[woodburner]

To keep off carrot fly?

On that series about victorian farming, they made a spray with tomato or potato leaf tea to deal with aphids I think. I don't think it would help with caroot fly as they are not on the plant when you spray it, and the maggots are below the surface so won't get dosed either.
Surely they had some way of keeping them away though or carrots would never have become popular in the first place. 

[digalotty]

ive been told that crushing garlic into a water sprayer and leaving it to soak makes a good spray, i was thinking of spraying this round a carrot bed, maybe the smell would deter carrot fly,or even slugs

[mumofstig]

The garlic spray is against aphids but as you say the smell may confuse the fly :blink:

[digalotty]

could be worth a go then

[Jay Dubya]

Hi, growing Tagettes among the carrots masks the carrot smell or putting up a barrier of fine mesh 3 feet high all round the bed also helps.

[Martin]

Not Victorian, but this from a book called "The Garden, for expert and amateur", given to my late father-in-law in 1937.

Double dig or trench the infected land after an attack. Spread a mixture of ash or sand and paraffin oil (1 pint of oil to a bushel) over the young plants after thinning and later apply soot freely. Burn all diseased carrots at once; to leave them rotting on the ground is a certain means of encouraging the pest.

[mumofstig]

That might be one of the uses the old boys had for chimney soot.
We don't use it because of the nasties in it but they didn't know about those,and enviro mesh hadn't been invented.

[pol and mick]

I came across an old recipe for carrot fly and that is to spray with nicotine insecticide every 10 days from May until mid-August.
recipe for Nicotine Emulsion:1 quart tobacco extract, 1/2 lb soft soap.3 gallons of water.Dissolve extract and soap in boiling water and dilute with the water.This is supposed to be more potent than either paraffin emulsion or quassia emulsion.

[mumofstig]

It is also illegal to use it nowadays...............
(they used to use boiled up fag ends) and it really smells bad as well if you do.....

[woodburner]

Interesting replies. Thanks everyone.
If the nicotine spray worked maybe the tomato leaf one would too. I'd rather try that than the nicotine as tobacco pickers get a nasty illness from too much contact, but I never heard of tomato pickers getting sick.

[Swing Swang]

I once came across an intreging reference to 'laurel water' and posted a comment on another thread. 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.

SS
 

[cAnAry53]

Ive heard from an old allotmenteer that 1 year old soot spread along the row is good

[treacleminer]

Interesting replies. Thanks everyone.
If the nicotine spray worked maybe the tomato leaf one would too. I'd rather try that than the nicotine as tobacco pickers get a nasty illness from too much contact, but I never heard of tomato pickers getting sick.

IMO the answers show that the old days weren't always necessarily 'good' - Agatha Christie would never have managed quite so many murders if nicotine spray, arsenic and strychnine hadn't been in regular use!

[jb]

Homemade nicotine spray from old fag ends also comes with a big risk of tobacco mosaic virus that can affect toms and peppers (possibly spuds but not sure) so if it blows over other crops can do a hell of a lot harm than good.

[Stripey_cat]

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.