Caterpillar Problems

[sanvanalona]

Caterpillars are awful, get patient and diligent and a pair of tweezers that will help at this stage. Definitely a minimum of 3 weeks away from harvest, imo

 

[Leonking]

I have taken everyone's advice here. I did spray them once already and it did work very well. I have been checking the ladies daily. Picking off the dead little pest. As for the dark brown spots, and like Nog mentioned, there are minimal brown patches. What I have been doing is picking out the brown spots.... Should I be doing that? Or should I be leaving them in? I know one thing, I hate to pick it off because I feel as I'm removing some of the sticky icky...lol, I feel as If removing it , hurts the buds...lol
SeaMaiden, should I spray the brown spots now, or after I have done the harvest?
Again, thank you all very much for all the help.

 

[Leonking]

You're quite welcome. Yes, IF your harvest is truly a month out, then one treatment of each should be applied. After that, you're going to have to watch the buds very closely during drying and curing for rot. When trimmed you'll find where the caterpillars get in and live, because it's fully of their frass (aka bug poop).

If you haven't read the how to harvest thread, go through it. You'll be checking every week for new pistils, bud building, etc. When the plant stops throwing out a whole bunch of new white pistils, you're a week or two out. That's the gauge I would use here.

Oh, when you find the bug poop sections I suggest spritzing with isopropyl, mostly because bug poop seems to cause me really bad allergies and whatever it is that irritates my insides seems to be neutralized when I use some iso. Plus it'll kill mold spores, etc. Then it just evaporates. Use 70% if not diluting.

Sea maiden,
I did read the thread you recommended and One other question I have now as far as the rot, when I spray with alcohol, should I be spraying the whole cola or just the brown spots? You had mentioned that I would be loosing some bud to rot, so does that mean the whole cola is bad or only is the cola still good except for the brown spots, which I will be removing?
It will get to me losing some bud but I will still have plenty.
This being my first time growing, I started with 5 seeds which all germinated. I then had read that when starting with seed, that
half would be male plants the majority of the time. So I planted 5 more.
The seeds were given to me and I was told that they didn't know if they were male or female. I ended up with all females.
After harvest, what would be the best way to store my supply?

 

[Seamaiden]

I spray the brown areas and the areas surrounding, because I don't know how far the infected area may truly go, if that makes sense. If the bud remaining looks clean, no mold, then leave it be. What you don't want is to then harvest those moldy bits and end up with them living in a jar with good bud, because those moldy bits are guaranteed to make the good bits go bad.

Since you're new, you should probably go with the classic glass jar curing and storage method. Keep paper grocery bags on hand in case you have issues getting the moisture levels even in the bud, the paper bags really help with that. They would be used *after* drying, for the curing portion. But, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

 

[Leonking]

I spray the brown areas and the areas surrounding, because I don't know how far the infected area may truly go, if that makes sense. If the bud remaining looks clean, no mold, then leave it be. What you don't want is to then harvest those moldy bits and end up with them living in a jar with good bud, because those moldy bits are guaranteed to make the good bits go bad.

Since you're new, you should probably go with the classic glass jar curing and storage method. Keep paper grocery bags on hand in case you have issues getting the moisture levels even in the bud, the paper bags really help with that. They would be used *after* drying, for the curing portion. But, let's not get too far ahead of ourselves.

You are awesome SeaMaiden, thanks for all the advise.
I will post a few more pictures in about 3 weeks to confirm that the ladies
are ready for harvest. In the mean time, I will spray the brown spots as you mentioned as well as give the ladies one more treatment.
I will post a new thread titled ..... To Harvest or Not to Harvest? with new
Pictures.
Look forward to hearing your advice.
Thanks again

 

[Nog]

I had a patch of 50 plants once that they wiped out, too many plants to be able to pick them all off, and there were a real lot of them.

I had another patch of 50 plants about 10 km away that got no caterpillars.

 

[Seamaiden]

Because they were happy at the first buffet?

 

[Leonking]

I had a patch of 50 plants once that they wiped out, too many plants to be able to pick them all off, and there were a real lot of them.

I had another patch of 50 plants about 10 km away that got no caterpillars.

Hey Nog, thank you also for your advice. Like I mentioned to SeaMaiden, I will post new pictures and look forward too your advice as well.

 

[Nog]

Because they were happy at the first buffet?

No, they start out as moths or butterflies, and I guess the second patch didn't have what was obviously a plague of these moths, maybe just wasn't on their flight path.

And OP, don't bother spraying brown bits of bud, those bits of bud are already dead and need to be pulled or cut away, or else they will cause mold.

 

[Seamaiden]

The spraying is to prevent the mold from spreading, which IME it will do even if you've cut away what appears to be all of it. A bit of added insurance if you will.

A good friend, @Blaze as a matter of fact, told me one year that purple strains tend to attract the most moths, and to try planting a trap crop of colored corn to draw them away. The year I grew out a deep purple cross he shared with me I did that with the corn and it appeared to work pretty well in conjunction with my IPM. So I find myself wondering if perhaps the other spot had a trap crop they found more enticing and inviting, whereas the spot that got hit *was* the most enticing.

Make sense?

 

[Nog]

[So I find myself wondering if perhaps the other spot had a trap crop they found more enticing and inviting, whereas the spot that got hit *was* the most enticing.]

Nah, just luck. That's nature.
All sorts of things can happen outdoors; one year my plants got flattened by a hailstorm with hail as big as golf balls, shredded the leaves off, but it was early in the season so they had enough time to recover.

Another time I got totally wiped out by a bushfire.

Usually I have harvested what I planted, but nothing is completely guaranteed outdoors.

There is a fair bit of luck involved growing outdoors, sure we do all we can to ensure a harvest, but sometimes it's in the hands of the gods.
But I'm a grower, that's who I am, so whatever happens I will just keep on doing what I do.
I can't stop growing because then I'm not being me, I would feel lost.

 

[Seamaiden]

Christ, a fire?!

 

[Nog]

Christ, a fire?!

Yeah, a bushfire. Roared through at 1am.
I went out there at 9am and where there had been green trees and bushes there were just blackened tree trunks with no leaves, and the ground was covered with grey ash ankle deep, and the smoke obscured the sun.

I checked my spots and all were burn, except one, which had fire burning around it, so I got a big leafy branch from a remaining tree, and beat out the flames that were feet from the plants.

Took me an hour and I put the fire out around the grow,and then when I got back to the fire trail I heard a helicopter engine, so I crouched down in about the only remaining clump of green bushes, and out of the smoke looms a helicopter flying really low.

It hovered almost over me for about half a minute, and then it flew to my grow and hovered over it for about 15 seconds, and then flew off.

Next time I checked that spot, about a week later, the plants had been pulled up. They even stole my shovel I had left at the spot.
It was a fire dept helicopter, a red one, and I say they tipped off LE.