Helping Save the Georgia Market Bulletin!

logo taken from the Georgia Department of Agriculture website

Since 1917, the Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin has served as a medium of exchange for farmers and consumers all over Georgia.  Think ebay or craigslist for agriculture needs.  In addition to being a venue for advertising to farmers and consumers, the Bulletin also offers a variety of information about agriculture and the Department of Agriculture, as well as columns on recipes and gardening.  Special editions are published throughout the year.  Some of these popular editions include a listing of "pick your own" farms in the spring and summer and a list of the state's "choose and cut" your own Christmas tree during the Christmas season.
The Market Bulletin contains ads for a wide variety of categories including: ag seeds, flowers, livestock, cattle, bee-keeping equipment, feed, hay and grain, fertilizers and mulches, farm machinery, goats and sheep, and poultry.  
As the need to cut costs has grown, the Farmers and Consumers Market Bulletin has been hit.  This once free, weekly publication is now bi-weekly with a subscription fee.  Although it may not be cancelled completely, there have been thoughts of only maintaining the Bulletin online.
The Georgia Pest Control Association (which Mid-Georgia Pest Control is a member of) recently presented the Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture, Gary Black, with a $1,000 check to be used for the publication of the Market Bulletin.  Dennis Judy, the president of the Georgia Pest Control Association, added "we would like to challenge other groups and associations that are served by the Department of Agriculture to match our contribution and support the Department of Agriculture's efforts to maintain and grow agriculture's influence in the state of Georgia."  Commissioner Black appreciated the contribution and said he would encourage other groups to accept this challenge.  Way to go, Georgia Pest Control Association!  

Prepare for Rodents

Norway Rat

As fall approaches, mice and rats will start looking for warmth, food, and shelter.  Most rodents live in woods and fields, but there are three species of mice and rats that live with people.  These are the house mouse, Norway rat, and roof rat.  All three of these species live in Georgia.
A mouse only needs an opening the size of a dime to enter your home.  The most common entry point is at the base of exterior doors and garage doors.  Other entry points include areas where pipes, wires, or cables enter the house.  To keep unwanted guests out, seal up these entry points and replace weather stripping if any gaps are present.  If you are in the house or garage and can see light coming through under the door, a mouse can probably get through, too.  Cleanliness can also help to avoid attracting rodents to your house, so cover all garbage cans and keep the area around the house clean and free of debris.

This would be a sign there are mice around

Check around the house and seal up any possible entrances

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

This looks like your typical backyard sandbox, right?  They provide hours of fun for many kids.  Unfortunately, my children often do not put the lid back on.  After the lid got left off, a storm came and days later this is what our sandbox looked like.  

My boys went out to play and came in to tell me there were little tadpoles in our sandbox.  Then our fifth grade neighbor sees it and tells us it's mosquitoes.  I decide to investigate the sandbox.  Sure enough, our once sandbox was now the home to mosquito larvae.  The fifth grader was right!

Female mosquitoes lay their eggs in water.  This can include large bodies of water, standing water (like swimming pools), or areas of collected standing water (like tree holes or gutters).  The eggs hatch into larvae or "wigglers" which grow to about 1-2 cm in length.  This stage lasts from days to several weeks.  Then the larvae change into pupae or "tumblers."  This stage only last 1-4 days.  The pupae then encases itself and transforms into adult mosquitoes.

Photos from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

To reduce the population of mosquitoes, eliminate any sources of standing water in your yard.  If you have a small pond, you can stock it with some fish that will eat the mosquito larvae.
Take a lesson from us, and don't let your once fun sandbox become a breeding pool for mosquitoes!

 

A Successful Fly Baiting!

Brian Boozer grilling some yummy hotdogs!

On Labor Day Weekend, our church had a "Tailgate Sunday Worship."  The entire worship experience was held outside underneath a high school rotunda.  Everyone brought food and we ate during the service.  We had grills going, tailgate tents up, and nice weather.  It was the perfect storm for a massive fly infestation!
This was our second annual "Tailgate Sunday."  We decided to take a lesson from last year and do something to stop all the flies that could threaten to terrorize our tailgate.
                                                                   

 Maxforce Fly Spot Bait was our product of choice.  After checking all the labels and reviews, we decided this product would be a good fit for our needs.  This outside tailgate would be the best opportunity to see if Maxforce was up for the challenge.  The product was mixed according to label directions and applied to various places around the rotunda.  It was applied to window and door ledges, the building roofline, around trashcans, and around the perimeter of the dumpster area.

 

To say the Maxforce Fly Spot Bait worked is an understatement!  From tailgate start to finish, there was not one fly seen.  The lack of flies was almost unheard of.  We had two lines of food set up: meats and sides on one row of tables and sweet desserts on the other.  While our worship experience occurred peering over the tables of food, no flies landed on dishes, bothered people as they ate, or hung around the trash.  

Awesome job, Maxforce!  We are looking forward to using this great bait product to help our customers with their pesky fly issues and help them have fun, fly-free picnics, cookouts, and tailgates.

     

Come visit "The Bug Shop"

Over the last few years, we've had homeowners ask us, "What's the best products to buy for pest control if I would like to try it myself?"  Our answer by default has been, "Try Home Depot, they have some decent stuff there."  Now, Mid-Georgia Pest Control's Grayson office is home to "The Bug Shop." 

The Bug Shop is designed for people who would like to have commercial strength products on hand for emergency treatments, or as an alternative for a professional home pest control service.  The products we provide are easy to use and economical for the pest problem at hand.  Even better, all products come with free professional advice from our qualified staff of technicians.
We invite you to stop by and check out this newest addition to Mid-Georgia Pest Control.  Our Grayson office address is 684 Grayson Parkway, next to the Grayson Library.  For more information, please call 770-962-4240.  

The Good, The Bad, and The Smelly

Photo by Daniel R. Suiter/University of Georgia

Bean Plataspids, or kudzu eating bugs, were first spotted in Georgia in 2009.  They have now spread throughout Georgia, South Carolina, part of North Carolina, and 4 counties in Alabama.  They dine on kudzu, otherwise known as the vine that ate the South!  Kudzu can grow up to a foot a day (that's 7 feet in a week, which is longer than the average human adult!).  Test plots in Athens, Georgia, showed these bugs reduced the amount of kudzu by one-third.  This should be good news, right?  However, along with good, comes some bad.  In addition to kudzu, bean plataspids also like legume plants such as soybeans.  It is still unknown what effect they might have on peanut crops.
Bean plataspids are part of the stinkbug family.  They also go by the names lablab bug and globular stink bug.  They can emit an unpleasant smell, but otherwise are not harmful to humans.  However, as the weather gets cooler, these bugs try to enter homes for the winter.  They are pea-sized and brown with a wide posterior.  They can fly very high.  Recent storms may have helped transport these bugs to surrounding states.  They are thought to be from somewhere in Asia, so how they traveled to the United States is not fully known.