So far this grow I’ve had mites, thrips, white fly, aphids, worms, grasshoppers, leaf hoppers and miners.
Aphids come early, so I’ll inspect daily and kill by hand, while spraying the big attractants like roses & nasturtiums with water & soap.
Thrips, leaf miners, & white flies I don’t worry about and just pull any infected leaves. (Don’t get a ton of any of these pest.)
Kill grasshoppers & leaf hoppers by hand.
If you have bud worms in your area you
have to be proactive. If you don’t, it’ll be too late in flower. I’ve already started spraying Bt and will continue throughout the grow. When the cannabis plants are young they don’t attract a lot of worms, so I’ll also spray other yard plants that I know the worms are going after now. I have Jerusalem Artichokes (tall yellow daisy like plant) and I’ve been spraying them also.
For mites I’m also proactive in cleaning out leaf liter and removing plants that attract them. For instance the two spotted mites love cat mint and dandelions so I’ll make sure to remove any that pop up over the winter. I saw mites in my yard back in February - with the two-spotted spider mites the overwintering females are the ones that are larger and reddish in color. I’ll use
spinosad and a home recipe of oil & isopropyl alcohol.
Spinosad is only supposed to be used a limited number of times during a growing, so will use the oils in veg and try and save the
spinosad for flower (August). Just pulled all my Nasturtiums a few days back, as they’re already fading and also a big attractant.
The worms are the only pest I’ll spray before seeing. Not a good plan to randomly spray stuff if you don’t know what the pest is and how much of a problem it’ll be. If you’re growing in the same area within a few years you’ll know what’s around. Most of the beneficial bugs will show up late to the party, so you don’t want to be killing all them before they can do the heavy lifting.
