This is great info, I am going to bookmark it!
+REP 4 u
I have dealt with bugs for months, on and off, one attack after another. I'm tired of going the old fashioned route and tossing infected plants and tearing apart the grow room only to miss one little pest and have that fucker turn into a colonie of hell raising, cannabis loving pests.
If i would have only known the solution is so simple. This doesn't work for Spider Mites tho, for them I would recomend Tabacco Tea...
Product Information:
The first product, u probably already used it or something like it, is "Don't Bug Me" by Fox Farms. It is a very common insect spray containing Pyrethrum made of Chrysanthemum Flowers. It kills on contact from the larvae to adults.
Pyrethrum by itself could get the job done, but most likely a few pests would get away and burrow into the soil to reproduce and start your problem all over. It only takes one female Thrips to survive and she can reproduce on her own w/o a male, aint that some shit! What an evil bitch. With thrips, gnats, and aphids the soil or medium needs to be treated also, Pyrethrum in large amounts will kill plants, so it is best to only use it where neccesary and apply lightly. On smaller plants a rinse may be needed the folowing day if the leaves are getting wrinkled badly.
So, Pyrethrum treats the plant, what treats the soil?
Mosquito Dunks (aka Bacillus Thuringiensis). Dunks are intended for killing mosquito larvae before it matures. The larvae think the Bacillus Thuringiensis is food, but once they digest it it kills them. Not only does this work on Mosquito larvae, but Thrips larvae, Aphids, Gnats, and much more!!!
Mosquito dunks can be used every watering, and are completely safe for plants so going overboard on dosage is not a big deal at all.
DIRECTIONS
Dunks can be broken into smaller pieces and used. I used a 1/2 dunk in a 5gallon bucket and watered with that for awhile. A lot of growers use the dunks every watering for the life of the plant and see no negative side effects.
Pyrethrum on the other hand is very effective, but too much is bad for plants. Only apply Pyrethrum towards the end of a light cycle, or right away when the lights go out. A light even mist over both sides of leaves will be fine for younger plants, but if you have a lot of mature plants I would suggest a Pyrethrum Fogger or Pyrethrum Bomb. One run of the fogger/bomb should be enough, but for a guaranteed result, I would run one more Fogger or Bomb 2-3 days later if allowed by the product that you choose, I would suggest looking for one that allows immediate re-application if they all arent like that. The only thing I would say to do different with the Fogger/Bomb vs. the Spray is to use the Fogger in the middle of the light cycle, pull the lights up (3 feet clearance to tpos of plants) and follow instructions on the can. Thrips feed at high noon, other than that they are hanging in the soil alot when they are young. Besides application time, follow these same instructions for the Pyrethrum Spray, as stated earlier the spray should be applied right before lights out or right after. Dont apply it before the lights go on because the pores on the leaves will be opened and looking for the morning dew to take in, you don't want to feed them a shot of Pyrethrum, the leaves will shrivel up like a nutsack on a block of dry ice...lol What u can do right before the lights go on to help even more is to spray the leaves down with a weak calcium supplement mixture(like Calmag). The calcium will block the nitrates , Thrips LOVE plants high in nitrates!! I hope this helps someone like it helped me!
I'm tired and stoned, half asleep so if I forgot something just PM me.
Last edited by CustomHydro; 12-18-2008 at 04:59 AM.
This is great info, I am going to bookmark it!
+REP 4 u
Thanks Roseman! Hope this helps everyone, I have never heard one bad thing about the Dunks. I am amazed that it isn't a popular treatment, seeing how good they work.
i have been using the dunks in my hydro and in my soilers.. it keeps em at bay pretty well but i dont think it totally eradicates them... at least it hasnt for me... i have heard that another great solution to critters in soil is nematodes.. i just got 2 million in the mail today so i will be treating this evening and will let yall know how it goes in the next few days
No Smell.
No Sell.
No Tell.
Please let us know!~
I never used them alone so I can't comment on that. The dunks are useless once anything turns into adult stage, theay only fight larva, thats why I chose Pyrethrum as a concurrent treatment. I can say with Pyrethrum that I haven't noticed any more activity in several days, and it stopped almost immediately. They may not be gone for sure, but I haven't had these good of results yet.
Quick question for anyone who knows...
Before this treatment i kept seeing leaf damage but no thrips or any pests for that matter. I have a 50x magnifyer and I would check 10 times per day. Where is a good place to find them, where do they hide? What is a good method to find them on leaves and in soil? I tried to shake the plants over white paper plates and nothing, I also pull up a little soil, or rockwool (in hydro plants) and spread it across plates to see if I could pin point them and still nothing. I know they were there then, and unless I start seeing leaf damage I don't know how to find them anymore, I would like to try to spot them prior to that though if they decide to come back... When I first had them they were bold and in the open, but after Pyrethrum I never saw them again.
I have a SOIL growing friend, and he grows Chrysanthemum Flowers in his yard, and blends them up in a blender, makiang a tea, and puts them in his soil. He says they also keep bugs off his tomatoes too.
Pyrethrum comes from those flowers, he is saving some cash, if I keep up on this path I will have to start growing them too...
Hey Flojo, any luck with the nematodes, my thrips are still completely gone, but I think I have some Vine Weevils or something similar. My plants only get attacked at night and I have never seen what is doing the damage. It's something big tho, I just got back from vacation for 6 days and a plant is missing a whole fan leaf.
ya sorry for not updating.. the nematodes worked like a charm.. the gnats wont go near the soil its like they know the nematodes are there LOL i still have them in my hydro so they are not so effective there, but if you are growing in soil they are a must have! i am still trying to figure out how to breed these puppies.. i would love to have a nematode farm
No Smell.
No Sell.
No Tell.
LOL, Hell yeah! A farm!
Well Flo, I owe u a super thanks! I thought my PH was spot on since I have this $200 meter, but it turns out I had a faulty probe. The probe said 5.5 and I was at 7.5, and it took like a half hour to lock in a reading. I was wondering why my RO water didn't need any PH down lately. I'm a stupid ass sometimes, alot of times lately...
Anyways if u wouldn't have told me it was PH I may not have looked there yet so thanks!
PS, I still cant get my runoff under 6.5 no matter what I do. I flushed several times with water as low as a PH of 2.5 and it only came down like .2 or .3, I'm afraid to keep doing that tho, that is a lot of PH down in there.
glad to hear you got it on lock now hydro! i never like to trust electronic readouts.. thats why i still use the good ol GH ph dropper and vial.. low tech but never faulty! sorry to hear about your mishap. and i am assuming you are referring to when you thought you had TSWV? not the thrips? im a little confused..
but anyways if you are flushing your soil i would not put 2.5 ph down in there.. what happens is the soil will soak up a bunch of it and let the rest run down.. especially if you are flushing repeatedly it will just go right down the sides most of the time to the drains at the bottom.. what you need to do is do a flush over time.. get id say 6.2 phd water and totally saturate your baby and let it have a runoff that it will not soak up.. what i like to do is get a metal cookie cooling rack and place it over a 5 gallon bucket and place it on the top so that i can set the plant down and the runoff will go to the bottom of the bucket and there is no chance my baby will soak any of it up..
so anyways totally saturate it, let it sit for an hour or two, totally saturate it again.. do this a few times over a few hours.. what this will do is allow all of the soil to get saturated bit by bit because chances are there are hard dry patches of soil that take longer to get saturated with water.. once you saturate the entire thing and have it free flowing then when you flush it will really start moving the stuff out of the soil and start to bring down the ph.
No Smell.
No Sell.
No Tell.
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