MIMedGrower
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- Feb 17, 2017
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I had many fliers i misdiagnosed as fungus gnats for a while. I wouldnt miss them again. Longer wings short body.
But i never saw any evidence in the rootballs. I saw the little .5mm little white bugs crawling on the edge of the black nursery pots. That was my only identification other than the fliers. I did not see so much waxy white stuff like the link i posted shows. But i learned that the white gook protects them from the pesticides.
You can look back a year in my thread and see many deficiencies and yellow plants. I thought it was grower error but it was the bugs eating the nutrients right out of the roots. Mostly always is described online and in my experience as a climbing mag deficiency with calcium spots as well. I wonder how many excessive cal mag users have them?
Talking with @Dirtbag we think because i am always introducing new clean plants and constantly harvesting the infested ones the system kept the root aphids down in numbers. I think thats why i had fliers before tons of crawlers. I only ever saw one or two before the heat wave early summer. Then they started growing in numbers. Thats when i shut down.
They are truly an invisible predator. For the first 2/3 of the infestation. You have to identify the mystery deficiency.
Sad to say. Many growers do not defeat these things. I even threw out or harvested all the plants and left the room clean and empty a month and cleaned again. They lay winter eggs that give birth to a live female even 6 months later. And they lay them in the walls. Sneaky.
And they hide under the root ball and insode deep to avoid contact with the fungucides and pesticides.