I WANT to try something else but I am scared.

This works...

I cant afford to try anything else....literally. I have had some serious medical expenses (no ins) and a crop failure would doom me.

Definitely stick with it and sorry about the med expenses. Lot of that going around lately. Got a friend from work who just got real ill and two days in the hospital and a procedure later BAM $30,000. Fuckin brutal in the USA with the health care, or lack there of that is.

I agree completely with altimod, it's a program that you need. If what you're doing works that great, not trying to undermine that success. I'm just looking for alternatives, cause I don't want to be on that pesticide treadmill. We'll all report our experience and perhaps we can gain some insight.

As for Mallet: it is a generic of Merit, active ingredient imidacloprid. It's even called "Mallet 75" lol

Keep up the fight gentleman.

Met52 worked for our Root Aphids a while back, but the shit is $600 a bag...

We have a 2000+ plant garden, which is hella expensive to treat with met52..

Conclusion... Met52 is a spore... a spore that has been known to be cultured and duplicated..

It's time to whip up some met52 fungal tea in the Vortex Brewers..

We have had success with doing similiar things with EM-1.

I'll let you farmers know how it goes.. If Met52 can be added to a fungal compost tea and applied as a root drench, it might just save all of us a boat load of money.

Off to the lab..


turbo

Hey turbo, let us know how that goes, i've been interested in trying something similar

I have tried to incorporate MET52 into ACT teas using recipes designed to promote fungal as opposed to bacterial growth. It did not seem to work. I also did experiments culturing MET52 onto rice grains and earthworm castings; both of these approaches were successful but the earthworm castings actually worked better. There is a scientific document on the web that details how to culture MET52 on different media; I don't have time right now to find the link but it is not too hard to find.

Large scale farms must be culturing their own, can you imagine the cost of applying Novazymes' product to a field?

Hi everyone. I'm going to chime in on this conversation in regards to MET52 (metarhizium anisopliae) and it's effect on our unknown bug (thought to be phylloxera). There's a whole bunch of variables that can account for our success or lack of success, but I really believe the answer is right here in front of us.

I stopped by my professors office (microbiology dept at CSU) and had a quick discussion on what type of experiment could solve this problem. I wrote down the 5 pathogenic organisms that are included in Capulators bennie pack (foliar version that has been effective to this point containing the MET52 metarhizium anisopliae ) and we agreed that the only way to decide which is the effective agent is to perform an experiment where we start with the 5 agents (separately to each plant) then test every combination thereof and use some type of simple visual determination for a loose bug count for each plant and compare.

My professor also explained that these organisms can behave in different ways having to do with the method of reproduction (sexual/asexual). These little things can have quite an effect on our results. Variables, variables, variables...(what else is new in the world of biology?) My first near term goal is to take a bug sample (flier, egg, and crawler) to the agricultural department and have it identified by an entomologist. Next, I will have a discussion with said entomologist to further investigate the insect and determine the best method to shrink down our experiment. I don't know how cooperative they will want to be, but fingers crossed the person will be interested in this dumb bug problem.

I think maybe culture the organisms, add the combinations and individuals to each separate plant and observe the results. I believe that cross contamination will only be an issue for those plants with the ineffective agent and a certain individual or a combination of the correct individuals would produce an effective result. Should I encourage cross contamination to really press the pathogenic organisms?

Also, I'm sampleless for what we believe to be the phylloxera. Anyone in the northern Colorado area can be of great help by providing me with dead samples of crawler and flier as well as some of the eggs. Thanks for your time folks. Please let me know any of your thoughts. This problem has continued for far too long and it is time to truly defeat it.

Lastly, Met52 is something of an inactive preventative. I don't believe it is doing anything until the spore contacts the insects and initiates germination. Temperature matters too, as does the strain (Met52 is strain F52). Here's an abstract from a research article on metarhizium anisopliae and temperature vs. germination rate:

"The germination rates of 122 isolates from 16 Metarhizium anisopliae var. anisopliae strains were determined over a range of temperatures (2·5–37°C). The germination rates and the germination temperature ranges of these strains differed (P > 0·05). Canonical variate analysis highlighted that the cold-active strains (those with isolates that germinated at 5°) were distinctly different from the other strains. The other strains could be separated into two groups, one in which the strains germinated at 37° (heat-active strains) and another in which the strains germinated at neither 5° nor 37° (meso-thermoactive). This study shows that in the development of Metarhizium myco-insecticides the germination rates and ranges of isolates can be matched to environmental temperatures."

S.A. McCammon*, A.C. Rath
Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, St John's Avenue, New Town, Tasmania 7008, Australia


Our F52 strain is temperature specific. I'll continue looking into that.

Well I have had Met52 in every inch of my soil for A few months. I have been using Caps benne packs for a couple weeks now. I watered with the 3 packs a couple nights ago and guess what? RA'S were fleeing from the pots, literally. I could see them crawling all over the pots. I'm convinced Met52 DOES NOT WORK. I wasted hundreds of dollars on Met. I am not very happy to say the least. Do yourselves a favor, forget about Met52 and buy some of Caps packs NOW. They will save your garden. Mine hasn't looked this good for a looooong time.

No luck personally with actually getting reproduction of the fungal components of Caps's foliar pack in a tea.
You can put it in there, sure, but I do not think it reproduces while brewing in the tea. Or at least reproduces on any sort of significant scale.

Surfr said:

Well I have had Met52 in every inch of my soil for A few months. I have been using Caps benne packs for a couple weeks now. I watered with the 3 packs a couple nights ago and guess what? RA'S were fleeing from the pots, literally. I could see them crawling all over the pots. I'm convinced Met52 DOES NOT WORK. I wasted hundreds of dollars on Met. I am not very happy to say the least. Do yourselves a favor, forget about Met52 and buy some of Caps packs NOW. They will save your garden. Mine hasn't looked this good for a looooong time.

Click to expand...

They are smart. Adults will run around to the other side of the stem to hide from me. They have a well-developed sense of preservation.

Surfr said:

Well I have had Met52 in every inch of my soil for A few months. I have been using Caps benne packs for a couple weeks now. I watered with the 3 packs a couple nights ago and guess what? RA'S were fleeing from the pots, literally. I could see them crawling all over the pots. I'm convinced Met52 DOES NOT WORK. I wasted hundreds of dollars on Met. I am not very happy to say the least. Do yourselves a favor, forget about Met52 and buy some of Caps packs NOW. They will save your garden. Mine hasn't looked this good for a looooong time.

Click to expand...

Holy shit man, I'm blown away by this and feel shitty about it. Do you have any pics of the aphid you're dealing with? I wonder if my success has to do with a different variety of bug? I don't get it. These reports of failures trip me out because I've had so much success with this product. I CANNOT and have not found any of these bugs in my grow, and my flower room is not small by any means. Man I'm sorry surfer, I don't know what to say man. Here are pics of the Phylloxera I was dealing with:


All I know is there are storage temps listed on the specs, Met can be damaged and rendered useless if it gets too hot or cold. I don't know. I do know you can reproduce this spore but i don't know how to do it and haven't tried or researched it.

Nachoconqueso: That experiment sounds awesome. I fully encourage you to go after it, please keep us posted with your results. I'll say, and I'm sure your professor would say, DO NOT let the bugs cross contaminate in your experiment. It will throw your results way off. You could keep them physically separated or your could paint a fat strip of tanglefoot on the rim of each pot. That might also give you good information about insects trying to flee the containers.

altimood: Even though Surfr and others have not had as much success as you I still really appreciate the information. Many of us have gained a lot of insight into this issue due to your efforts.

On culturing Met52: I'm going to give it a go in potato dextrose with crab meal added. Most labs culture in a mixture of potato starch and dextrose, so that's my goal. I'll let everyone know how it goes and please keep posting all your valuable experiences too.

girlwondergrows said:

Nachoconqueso: That experiment sounds awesome. I fully encourage you to go after it, please keep us posted with your results. I'll say, and I'm sure your professor would say, DO NOT let the bugs cross contaminate in your experiment. It will throw your results way off. You could keep them physically separated or your could paint a fat strip of tanglefoot on the rim of each pot. That might also give you good information about insects trying to flee the containers.

altimood: Even though Surfr and others have not had as much success as you I still really appreciate the information. Many of us have gained a lot of insight into this issue due to your efforts.

On culturing Met52: I'm going to give it a go in potato dextrose with crab meal added. Most labs culture in a mixture of potato starch and dextrose, so that's my goal. I'll let everyone know how it goes and please keep posting all your valuable experiences too.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that. I just want it to work for everyone like it has for me. These insects almost took me out permanently after after losing THOUSANDS of dollars and Met 52 saved me. I would not be growing today if it wasn't for this product. That's all I can say about it. I'm very happy to see everyone continuing the science based research in finding out the facts and truth's of this product as I'm not the only one who has taken major hits from RA. Best of luck to all in there research and battles.
-A

Resinable said:

I have tried to incorporate MET52 into ACT teas using recipes designed to promote fungal as opposed to bacterial growth. It did not seem to work. I also did experiments culturing MET52 onto rice grains and earthworm castings; both of these approaches were successful but the earthworm castings actually worked better. There is a scientific document on the web that details how to culture MET52 on different media; I don't have time right now to find the link but it is not too hard to find.

Large scale farms must be culturing their own, can you imagine the cost of applying Novazymes' product to a field?

Click to expand...

What was your process in preparing the fungal tea? Did you let the met52 activate into spore form before adding it to the brew? I usually do this in warm areas for 3-4 days with oat and mushroom compost based fungal teas that get really moldy before adding to tea..

Idea is to activate the spore, culture the spore, reproduce the spore..

Agreed, large nursery applications of met52 must be a nightmare... Unless they are treating Met52 directly to cuttings on the crown of the root system which would ride with the plant all the way into transplant in a new container..

We tried adding to our 1 gallon's before the 5 gallon transplant with mild success....

I'll let you know how the teas goes..

Just ordered a heady new 1000x scope...

turbo

Which scope are ya picking up?

Re: Altimood, Re: Surfr: I think the discrepancies in the efficacy of various treatments, MET 52, Imidacloprid, Pyrthrins, etc. are probably caused by growers battling different pests. What Altimood is fighting look like true RAs others might be battling another type of root pest. Also I believe the use of "phylloxera" to describe root aphids is a misnomer; although phylloxera are related to aphids they are not the same thing. Phylloxera are primarily, if not exclusively, a vineyard pest. I have yet to see any evidence of actual phylloxera attacking cannabis, so I am skeptical that this is happening.

I think MET52 does work against RAs, at least the kind Altimood has. Correct insect IDing is crucial.

Here is a link to the paper about MET culturing: http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=jm.2007.690.695

Turbo14: I followed the directions for brewing a fungal dominate tea given by Microbe Man; I did not activate the spores prior to brewing. It might be beneficial to do so but I have a hunch that it still would not work. My observation of MET is that it is quite fragile: the turbulence of a tea brewer would seem to break it apart. Even the mechanical action of watering seems to disrupt the MET, thus media requiring frequent waterings is not ideal for use with MET. For example, I let a tote of coco inoculated with MET sit for a week or so partly covered, the result was a huge bloom of MET. The same coco mix that had been used for transplanting (and received waterings) had far less MET growing in it.

Surfr: I would be very curious to see pictures of your insect pest. Is there any way you could post some? I know not everyone has a micro camera . . . I need to get one myself as soon as I can afford one.

my Qrazy train root ball.
this plant started with met 52 and was cloned and vegged while my last bloom pulled through a bad RA infestation. as you can see it ended with a full root ball. 100% better :)
i have not seen a good (bug free) root ball in months. its such a relief to be able to grow without soil bugs....i have had thrips, gnats and RAs back to back.

im not saying met alone will work, as i did a bunch of other things from mighty wash, pyrethrum and clone and remove medium... but the war can be won without immid.

Resinable- Are you in Colorado? I agree that this is pest specific, although I felt like the Colorado species was another form of Phylloxera. Know one really knows at this point, or I should say that the information available isn't at all clear on this. Grape vine phylloxera don't look anything like what i have specifically, but there life cycle and reproductive properties are similar. Let's talk about why Met works. The action, as I have come to understand it, is related to its ability to attach itself to the HARD EXOSKELETON of this particular insect. This is why it is not effective against fungus gnats. I'd like for people in all these different areas to understand this. This generalization that this product works or doesn't work isn't applicable if we're not on the same page talking about the same bug. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and the 800x scope I use is worth $50 dollars. That's pretty cheap in terms of acquiring the info that you need to make a decision about what route you're going to take with trying to save your garden.
Anyway, I'm still using Met 52. I say IT DOES WORK. At least for me it does. For all these people that say it doesn't work, I'm just asking for pictures of the insect you're dealing with so we can make some REAL and FAIR conclusions on this for the benefit of everyone interested. Thanks for all your hard work and interest, too.

Thought you guys would appreciate some close ups of some root aphids in action...

These are on some italian large leaf basil and lettuce grown using Nutrient Film Tech....But im pretty sure these are of the same genus as the ones we encounter as THCfarmers....

These are root aphid nymphs gorging away! After finding these lil fuckers some azatrol was mixed up and shit is under control...

Last pic is of some damage the aphids did before we caught them. Blackened roots, etc.