BTW, I plan to spray liquid on just clusters of cherry tomatoes. No broad area spraying. Just a quick squirt. I plan to use spray instead of dust because my impression has always been that most of the dust goes on the ground or on surrounding plants, which certainly don't need it, nor do the bees that go to those other plants.

Allegedly Sevin only works on immature stink bugs. Is that really the case? Of course, that just means that it'll take a stink bug lifetime to start working completely, which I guess might be a few months. Ugh.

Frequency of application? What if it rains?

What are the guidelines for consumption after application? Wait for hours, days, er, weeks? Does Sevin wash off? I've heard that it doesn't penetrate the fruit.

It doesn't kill stink bugs. Well it 'might' kill the very young just hatched ones that you can't see yet. Can't say for sure. But the ones big enough to do damage to the fruit just shrug it off.

I have sprayed it directly on the bug itself (which is what is recommended - direct contact) and while he might fly off and die somewhere out of my sight later, all he does when sprayed is twitch a bit and then he just keeps doing his thing and my fruit still had all the spots.

From what I have read the dust works better than the liquid because it irritates them more (you are supposed to dust the plant not the fruit) but I won't use the dust for all the reasons you mentioned.

So 3 years ago I switched to Surround. It is kaolin clay that you mix in water and spray the whole plant (keep shaking while spraying as it is easy to plug the sprayer). It washes right off so you have to re-apply after rain. But it works. It has billions of little sharp edged grains in it that irritate the #%^#^$& out of them and they leave. You can watch them land on it, twitch like crazy and then fly off.

I will warn you that it isn't pretty. It leaves a gray coating on everything. But it hasn't hurt the plants at all and it doesn't kill anything but my SB damage is down by 80%.

Your choice.

Dave

Now, Carbaryl/Sevin is supposed to be a contact insecticide, so the fact that you sprayed one with it, and it didn't immediately keel over, is certainly troubling.

Maybe I'll give it a try, and report back.

@ Dave,
where do you get Surround ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkrK8LvQPa8&feature=youtu.be

I suppose you could do this with Surround, but I believe DE is somewhat cheaper than Surround.

I don't have a leaf blower, but a shop vac running in reverse should do the job, pointed as a handful of the stuff. I gotta try this!