News — Nick Federoff Blog

Top 3 Summer Insects to Control - by Nick Federoff

Posted by Jill Yanus on

Top 3 Summer Insects to Control - by Nick Federoff

Other than being creepy, crawling, icky and scary what do you know about insects?   What might seem like a page from a Stephen King novel, the Smithsonian Institute’s Department of Entomology’s, Terry Erwin, discovered there are some 10 quintillion (that’s with 19 zeros) individual insects alive on the earth. But don’t get worried because there’s only 91,000 species in the U.S. (butterflies number in at 750 species but they’re so cute I’m not sure we should count them). Okay, back to reality there are 300 pounds of insects for every pound of human so easy on those Big Macs. Some...

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How to Know When to use Organic, Natural or Chemicals In and Around the House

Posted by Jill Yanus on

How to Know When to use Organic, Natural or Chemicals In and Around the House

  When I was a kid during Saturday lawn chores you’d hear my dad yell “Get me the Chlordane,” or “Someone didn’t put the “Paraquat away,” and “Go to the hardware store and buy some sodium methyldithiocarbamate (actually he said Vapam).” These are either hardcore insect sprays, weed killers and soil fumigants that have been taken off the market for years. And, let’s not forget the neighbors used to lend this stuff to each other over the fence while eating a sandwich. Today it’s a different story. Insecticides, herbicides, rodenticides, molluscicides and all the “cides” are ever changing in this...

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3 Simple Steps to Cleaning a Pump Sprayer - by Nick Federoff

Posted by Jill Yanus on

3 Simple Steps to Cleaning a Pump Sprayer - by Nick Federoff

Did you know that many things gardening typically begins on the farm? Farmers are usually the trailblazers in bringing products we use for our garden to the consumer marketplace. Or, at the very least inspiring the inventors of the world to make something better and easier to use. For instance, in the 1850’s an insect called the Colorado Beetle was devastating the potato industry. A gravity fed leather knapsack, (think of a bota bag backpack on steroids – which probably leaked all over you), oozed a chemical solution out of a sprinkler head as the farmer painstakingly walked every inch...

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