If you use mulch around your house be very careful about buying mulch this year. After the hurricane in New Orleans many trees were blown over. These trees were then turned into mulch and the state is trying to get rid of tons and tons of this mulch to any state or company who will come and haul it away. So it will be showing up in Home Depot and Lowes at dirt cheap prices with one huge problem; Formosan Termites will be the bonus in many of those bags. New Orleans is one of the few areas in the country were the Formosan Termites has gotten a strong hold and most of the trees blown down were already badly infested with those termites. Now we may have the worst case of transporting a problem to all parts of the country that we have ever had. These termites can eat a house in no time at all and we have no good control against them, so tell your friends that own homes to avoid cheap mulch and know were it came from.



Here's the link:

Click here: LSU AgCenter . Formosan Subterranean Termites Portal

http://www.agctr.lsu.edu/en/environment/insects/Termites/formosan_termites/

On a related side note. A man rented a building in the town where I work and was selling "used furniture." Well the market wasn't what he thought and his business failed. I know, what a shock. The guy fled and left the building owner with a warehouse full of furniture that he bought on the cheap from ravaged Louisiana. The furniture was all junk and probably covered in God knows what. Last I saw the building owner had three 30 yard dumpsters full waiting to be picked up.

Like he said, be careful this year. Even up here in the Northeast.

Cars, clothes, food stuffs, everything imaginable is being moved out all over the country.

Wow....thats a good deal honey. BUYERS BEWARE.

:call: :eek5: :chatter :read: :faga:

Thanks Joe...buy local still hot

go to the original http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/business/14044425.htm

A recent Internet rumor warning that Formosan termite-infested mulch is being shipped around the country from the states affected by last year's hurricanes appears to be false, agriculture officials said.

A state agriculture official and termite researchers, meanwhile, cautioned mulch buyers to keep an eye out and immediately report the termites if they are found in bags of the chipped wood.

"So far, we have had no incidents of material moving from a quarantined area to a non-quarantined area," said Mike Tagert, the director of the Bureau of Plant Industry with Mississippi's Department of Agriculture and Commerce.

The rumor had it that infested trees, which had been blown down by Katrina, Rita and Wilma, were being chipped and resold in other parts of the country.

Mulch is an important component of landscaping and gardening. Wood chips are spread around plants to keep moisture in the soil around their roots.

The Mulch & Soil Council, in a release responding to the Internet rumor, said that it would be very unlikely, even if an infested tree was ground into mulch, that the soft-bodied termite could withstand the chipping machine or the high temperatures inside of a sealed bag of mulch.

Tagert said that 10 agricultural field investigators were canvassing the South Mississippi quarantine area looking for people moving vegetation or wood products out.

"We are making certain that we are not transporting Formosans to counties that do not yet have them documented," Tagert said.

Concern about Formosan termites stems from their rapid march across much of the South and their voracious appetite for wood. Research has shown that Formosans can eat up to 1,000 pounds of wood a year, compared to the seven pounds that native termites eat. University of Hawaii researchers have found that a single colony can eat the entire structure of a house within two years.

The termites cause around $1.5 billion in damage a year nationally.

A quarantine, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine to transport vegetation and wood out of the infested area, has been set in 25 Mississippi counties, from the Coast up to Jackson.

It is not illegal to transport wood within infested areas that are already under quarantine.

But Dr. Jianzhong Sun, a Mississippi State University entomologist who specializes in Formosans, said that whether the insect is spread through bags of mulch or by accident, the quarantine is not stopping the termites' invasion.

"The industries hired to clean up the millions of yards of debris left by the storms are shredding these trees for use as landscape mulches and other uses," he said. "Subterranean termites are being inadvertently spread to new areas, which will result in another disastrous consequence of the storms within a few years."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tracks the Formosans in parts of 14 states. The highly social and aggressive insects have the potential to infest more areas throughout the South before they reach the limit of their range

Along the same lines you should read this http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20060309/D8G7OEK89.html

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/termites.asp