FOR RELEASE THE WEEK OF JULY 5, 1999:
It’s often hard to wash hands at a picnic. What about those new hand sanitizers that don’t need water?
You certainly don’t want to skip hand-washing before you prepare or eat food at a picnic, especially considering how primitive the toilet facilities can be! According to Sandy McCurdy, University of Idaho extension food safety coordinator, the best way is to pack along an extra thermos of warm water, a bar of soap and paper towels. A thermos with a bottom spout makes it simple to set up a hand-washing station at one end of your picnic table.
Most of those new, waterless hand sanitizers rely on alcohol to kill bacteria. "They’re effective," says McCurdy, "but use them only occasionally, when soap and water are truly unavailable." Not only does the alcohol dry your skin excessively, but it destroys your skin’s beneficial natural bacteria right along with the "bad" bacteria. Another shortcoming of hand sanitizers: because you don’t rinse, the grime stays on your hands.
"The best way to wash hands is still to use regular soap and plenty of warm water," says McCurdy.
We had 4-inch long tomato hornworms in our garden last summer. How can we stay ahead of them this year?
Look on your tomato leaves for single, smooth, round, pale-green eggs, says Bob Stoltz, University of Idaho extension entomologist. They were laid in early summer by sphinx moths–the moths that look like gray hummingbirds and flit around your petunias near dusk.
Tomato hornworms–bright-green, diagonally striped and with a pointed spine at the tail end--are only caterpillars for three to four weeks of their life cycle, says Stoltz. If it’s already too late to crush the eggs, nail the young caterpillars early with Bt or Sevin before they defoliate your tomatoes.
"Until they’re about half-grown, they don’t eat much," he says. "There are so many leaves on a tomato that you don’t notice the little ones feeding. Then all of the sudden you find these monsters out there. Two or three of those on a fairly small tomato plant can work it over pretty good."
If you’re already doing the monster mash with those older worms, look for the oval, white cocoons of parasitic wasps attached to their skins. Tomato hornworms are actually quite susceptible to parasitic wasps, and some experts recommend leaving a few infested ones alive so you’ll have a good population of wasps to unleash on the rest. Stoltz says pick all the other hornworms right off your plants.
By the way, if you’re tilling your garden this fall and unearth brown, hard-shelled pupae that have little "pitcher-handles" attached to them, that’s next year’s supply of hornworms. Get rid of them. Enough will fly over from your neighbor’s; you don’t need to grow your own.
I’d like to fertilize my container plants organically. How do I make compost tea?
Lots of recipes will work, from mixing compost with water to continuously passing water through a container of compost, says Bob Rynk, University of Idaho extension waste management engineer. One common method involves filling a burlap bag with five to six shovelfuls of compost and then soaking the bag in a 50-gallon drum of water for two to three days. The water becomes the compost tea and the spent compost from the burlap bag still makes a useful soil amendment.
"Using compost tea can be tricky," Rynk says. "Its nutrient content and strength will vary, depending on the compost used and how the tea is made. Experiment with it before using it extensively on your plants." Start by applying it every one to two weeks, he says, then amend the schedule as your individual experience suggests.
For more information on composting, order the University of Idaho’s 41-page booklet Composting at Home, by Bob Rynk and Michael Colt, for $3.00, plus shipping and sales tax, from Ag Publications at (208) 885-7982, http://info.ag.uidaho.edu, or Ag Communications, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID 83844-2332.
Can you give me some information about the new sugar substitute that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration? I don’t think I’ve seen it at the supermarket. What products is it in and is it safe to use?
Sucralose was approved by the FDA in 1997 and is about 600 times sweeter than sugar, says Martha Raidl, University of Idaho extension nutrition specialist. "It’s supposed to taste like sugar and have no bitter after-taste"–and you can cook and bake with it.
The FDA has approved the use of sucralose in 15 food and beverage categories, including baked goods and baking mixes, beverages, dairy products, processed fruits and fruit juices. But, to date, it’s only found in a few diet drinks like Diet RC Cola and Diet Veryfine.
In terms of safety, Raidl says sucralose has been "tested extensively for 20 years, and all of the human research studies showed that it didn’t cause cancer, reproductive problems or neurological damage."